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Alright guys. The moment I have been waiting for.... After several weeks of diagnostic, scouring forums, trying out different advice from people here on the forum, I am happy to report the car is fixed. The idle problem and rich problem is gone. There may be a little hic-up in the idle but I'm good with that and its an old motor. What was the problem? What is the primary sensor that controls A/F ratio??...... THE MAF SENSOR. Yep. The one I replaced mine with was faulty out of the box. If you remember, I also had a mid throttle fuel cut issue, where the engine would stumble under acceleration sometimes. I replaced the MAF with a REFURBISHED napa unit, and that specific problem went away. But not the idle. Tricked me into thinking there was no way it could still be the MAF. Let me tell you fellas, I really appreciate all the ideas, feedback and support on this. It's hard out there for a home mechanic and forums like these really keep a guy going at it. In the end, it cost me $550 for the shop to find the problem and replace the MAF (they did this before calling me) but I'm not complaining. I could have easily spent that or more if I kept throwing parts at it hoping for a fix. Lesson learned. How does occam's razor go? If its the most obvious solution, that's probably the solution? Anyways. Hope this helps some poor fool down the road. I know I learned a lot about system testing and diagnostics. Time to wrap up this car and enjoy it!

Ball-joint failed! Going around a corner! Horror of horrors! I had a similar failure once, a long time ago, and the thought still haunts me. But it was on an old car, a 1934 Austin, and the ball-joint stem sheared off at the top of the ball, also when going around a bend. But times have moved on since then, and there have been huge advances in metallurgy and in manufacturing techniques since then.

Could also check the door jam Vin tag. Sometimes that info will be there

wow.. good thing you werent going very fast. Had something similar happen with a Caddy once, in my driveway.. except it ripped the ball joint right out of the control arm... had to replace both the control arm and the ball joint

had a scare last night with it. apparently the passenger ball joint nut dident like being off and on multiple times over the past year and the nut was compromised. went around a corner and the nut popped off the ball joint and it separated. ended up jacking it up there and re assembling the ball joint using a lug nut for the ball joint to get it home. i swapped the lug nut for a standard castle nut with new cotter pin. it had one of those lock nuts on there before. even found the old nut with the threads tore out of it. i read the torque spec for the ball joint is 29.5 ft pound i put it up to 40 ft pound with new nut and a little more for the cotter so im prety sure it should stay put now. so far no at temp light but i havent really driven it far yet.

A working converter will generally show a pretty flat rear O2 signal around 700 millivolts. GD

Blue tape was to help protect the valve seats, which had been ground along with the new valves. Took many hours to polish those heads, I didn't bother to count them. I did it over the last winter. I can't post pics over my phone, will do so when I get back on the computer

Kind of late to the party here, but thanks for documenting all this for others to pick thru when they attempt a EJ swap. If I had seen this when you were working on it, I would have helped out. Kudos to Bennie for being here and helping you thru some rough spots. Real happy that you are willing to go hard on this and do as much possible to get it back on the road, not many of these left. Pretty sure my build is in here, but it was quite a while ago. I might do a update in the Members Ride section. Have a drool rag ready