Help! My car is still in Paso!

Dammit...... On the way up to paso my car started popping and stalling under load. Sounded like vapor lock the first time (we were coming up a hill in traffic) but it very slowly got worse and worse. Anytime it was under load it just shat, no power and if i gave it too much throttle it just stalled. First thing that came to mind was fuel system. we werre on the road so we checked the fuel filter and adjacent lines to the carb (mechanical fuel pump) for heat as soon as we got off the freeway and everything up to the fuel pump was stone cold. so we took the fuel filter off and dumped it out, not a lot of shat came out. didnt fix problem. we figured we must have fuel then, so next came spark advance (i had set it before we left with a timing light at 12 advance but we were trying the simple things first). didnt help. when we barely made it to paso, we tried points and condensor and coil, then put an electric fuel pump on it with a regulator and a pressure gauge and rebuilt the carb. then, finally put a brand new carb on it. we decided to try to make it home like we made it up there but the car wouldnt have it and we turned around and barely made it back to my girfriends aunts house in paso, where it will rest for a week till i can get back up there next weekend.

anybody have any ideas of other things to try. it has a new cap and rotor, plugs and wires on it as well, and is a low mileage big block chevy with a turbo 350 trans.

thanks
rob

 

Jesus Rob. You had all them parts with ya on the ride there? I saw you real quick at the meet and greet. Glad that you did make it and hope you enjoyed the show and hope you do get that problem solved and fixed. KNUX!

 

Was there smoke (white or black?)?

 

I dont think there was smoke out the exhaust, but i cant be positive. I checked the transmission vacuum solenoid jingus to make sure i wasnt I did develop a particularly nasty intake manifold leak though. i forgot to mention that when its cold it is fine, just when it gets up to operating temperature is when it starts to act up.

 

you check your valves? my ranchero did some **** similiar to that, was an intake valve. maybe your rockers came out of adjustment or something.

 

Is the choke stuck?

 

funny thing about the choke.... we bought that new carb and the choke stuck leaving paso! brand new carb! unrelated to the problem though. we wired it open and still no dice. could be the valves.... any other ideas?

 

You said you set the initial timing at 12 degrees...Did you figure your mechanical and vacuum advance and then adjust for the total? I recently had a similiar problem on my small block setup. I needed 36 degrees of total timing and had it set at 12 degrees initial. Problem was that I didn't have any vacuum advance and my mechanical was only 14 degrees, which gave me a total of around 26...so, I bumped the initial up to 22 degrees and it seems to have taken care of it. Not sure what the recommended total timing is on your big block, but I'm sure someone on here knows. Good luck.

 

Yeah, timing was a big thought. Tried to get a new vacuum advancee for it, no one had one. I upped the timing but it seemed to get worse with more advance....

 

You might give a quick check to the cap and rotor, new doesn't always mean good.

Your car is behaving very much like my Impala did with a wet distributor, idled fine, revved fine in nuetral, but stick it in gear and put a lode on it and blotto, it would stall. A damaged / defective cap might behave like a wet one.

 

Good thought, i will bring a cap and rotor with me when i go up to get it.

 

Points could be getting fried too. KNUX!

 

Thanks everyone. I did check for vacuum leaks first, forgot to mention that. And it had a pertronix on it when the problem first started and just to make sure all the parts were new i replaced the pertronix with a points/condensor setup... no change in the problem.

 

My 37 did that once....it was the ballast resistor......

 

A coil that is breaking down will run fine when cold and bad when it heats up, because it's opening the gap on any broken wires. Doesn't hurt to change one if you have a spare.

 

stock style g.m. Dizzy?

Make sure the weights aren't sticking open.

on the timing, try this.

you're gonna need an "El Cheapo" Sears Timing light with adjustable advance.

disconnect and plug the vac*** advance. you don't need it.

what you're shooting for is TOTAL advance, and "all in" by 3000.

meaning, with the help of a friend, they will get in the car and hold her at 3000.
you're shooting for a total of around 32-34.

set the light at the target advance, line up the marks on the balancer at 3k.

let it idle back down.

then check where your initial lives. it should be somewhere around 17. let it warm up. once at operating temp, kill it and make sure it doesn't "hot start" (have difficulty starting.)

if it dosen't, check it out around the block.

if it has the same problems as before, it's fuel delivery.

if while you're adjusting the timing it "bounces" around real bad, your dizzy, or the wiring to it is bunk.

once it's all said and done, if it runs better, re-adjust your carb, and get back to the o.c., Mains!

 

I had a 428 ford doing that to me once, what I found was an extra fuel filter near the tank that I did not know about. It was open just enough to let it run until I need more fuel, it had good pressure and everything else was good. I fixed the carb distributer everything I could think of and pushed the **** out of it getting it out of the road every time. There are filters on the intake in the gas tank in some cars as well, and if you have **** in the tank it could be moving around as well clogging of the pickup tube our outlet drain if you have it that way. I know you said you checked the line but if you have any rubber hose on it as it should the hose could be broken down on the inside kinda like having a recap tire peal off but inside. I had that one once with a model A I had. I disected the line after I took it off and found what looked like a gill in it some gas got through enough to run but not when I needed extra fuel, just poor quality from goodyear.

 

Same thing happen to me, I had a dual point dist in my roadster and the condensor was getting hot and would not let the car run at full power?

 

could have broken a valve spring or 2, would make it miss, how old are they?

 

Is the fuel pump mounted very far from tank or higher?
or is it at the rear next to the TANK?
If.....not close to tank [and about the same level]..... it will not work well otherwise.
Also it is amazing, how fast that problem mentioned above, will ruin a new fuel pump.

 

Maybe timing chain jumped a tooth.

 

OK, i'm jumping in with a weird question. Does this thing have solid lifters? If yes, and they're near zero lash from lack of maintenance, heat will expand the related pieces enough to hang the valves open. They won't seat when hot and cause a similar problem. Problem goes away when cold again

 

The valve springs are probly pretty old but were new when the motor was rebuilt less than 20k mi. ago. I will heck those too. thanks guys.

 

same thing happend to use in our pontiac on the way to fl a few yrs back. never had that prob before, seemed to vapor lock. we thought it was the fuel pump too. when we got to fl we were driving around and it acted up again. it was the timing chain that ****ed. but fixed the prob

 

I doesnt sound solid lifter, but the guy that owned it before me would know. i plan on going to pick the thing up with a trailer (hate to do it but dont have the time to f with it) and when i get it back here i am going to check everything weve talked about. i plan on resetting all the lfters and resealing the intake so i will find out for sure then. thanks again guys.

 

it had a mechanical pump mounted to the engine (standard chevy deal), the electric i put on at the tank. could be timing chain....

 

Is the vent on the gas tank open? When the motor is cold means it has set awhile and tank vented but running until warm uses gas faster than the tank is venting pulling a vacuum maybe starving the fuel system?

 

If they're solids, and ill maintained, they won't sound like solids if the valves have receded into the seats and taken up the lash. What is it by the way?

 

take a complete hei with you. sounds like electronic's issue to me. pull # 1 and check the dizzy to make sure it didn't jump time. let us know and good luck!

 

sounds like it could be a coil. they like to work when cold but not work when hot if they are going bad.

Also, here is something my brother just experienced. His 350 was missing bad and stuttered bad at launch. He did the timing thing...he switched the carb out then a buddy mentioned this.

Start the car in the dark and look at the spark plugs and look for a spark jumping from a cracked sparkplug to the block. Sure enough he saw it right off the bat. Switched out the plug and bam it runs like a new engine now.