Man, I'm such a dumb ass. For the last month or so my car has been getting doggier and doggier. I know the carb is a heap of junk, it has an internal vacume leak, but I was getting concerned the motor may be on its way south. The plan was to limp it through the Drags weekend and face it over the winter, if it made it that far. So, as we motored out of IL towards the drags, I was dealing with a motor that would only pull a little over 3,000 rpms. When we hit the long hills it would slow 5-10 mph and would useally recover as we went down the hill. As the weekend progerssed it was slowly loosing the upper rpm range. All the while, the motor pulled pretty good (considering a 2800 rpm cap) and didn't miss. The water temp was good and it had good oil pressure. I was blaming the poor performance on the carb. I even looked for one at the swap and would have changed it in the hotel lot, but none were to be found. Ran some low 20.30 to 20.70 second passes, which I guess wasn't real bad for a 6 with a messed up carb. On the trip home, it seemed to be worse. When we took a wrong turn in KC and took the secinic tour of the city it was real bad, only getting to 2,000 rpm, floored. The car has one of those aftermarket throttle cables with the allen set screw and I was thinking maybe it was starting to slip. About that time my wife discovered the floor mat was bunched up around the pedal. She pulled that away and I instantly gained 500 rpm, which at least made it drivable again. At the next stop I took up all the slack in the cable, but didn't have a small enough allen wrench with me to check the tightness of the set screw. That got me back to the 3,000 rpm range. Tonight I was talking with Stick Shift's dad and he was asking about the throttle cable. I pulled the air cleaner and we checked. There was a lot of slop in the cable again! We took up all the adjustment available. For the first time, since I've been driving it we checked how far the pedal was opening the carb. (some things you simply can't do by yourself) Guess what, the carb was only opening about 1/2 way!!!!!!!!!! Guess what I'm going to be doing tomorrow? Wonder how fast it really would have run......Worst part is back when I was racing I always told the guys that the very first thing you check it to be sure the pedel opens the carb fully. Guess I should listen to myself. (good thing those guys arn't around right now, I'd never hear the end of it) Anyway, thought you guys could use a good laugh. Gene Gene
well, we'll take up the slack...what the fuck were you thinking?!?!? hahaha...man, I went through the same thing on an old pickup, swapped the stock Quadra-puke out for a Holley 650 and the thing would not do squat...turns out the adjustment on the cable holder I'd bought was too short and I was only getting almost half throttle...needless to say it was REALLY fun after that once I could actually floor it and the carb opened all the way...
Gene, I think I saw that on an episode of PINKS. The one where this guy is sandbagging the other guy at the light about how slow his car is and then... BAM! Wide Open Throttle! You can rest easier now that you've found the culprit. See you next year- Bil
Oh, so THAT was your excuse when running against my bro's '54 Caddy...his excuse is he's trying to move 4600 pounds down the track...that's why he only got 20 second passes...guess I'll try to explain this one to him... Great to see you Gene...hope to see you again BEFORE the next HAMB drags... R-
Heheh -- its the silly shit that bites you on the ass . . . but the guy with the real 'nads fesses up and posts it all over the internet for everyone to read. Hope that gets you going a bit faster! I'm probably in that 20 second bracket even at WOT with my old Buick and slushbox.
Well glade to hear you got the problem figured out. Kinda what we thought guess. Know if I can learn to read a map for the shortest distance between points............ Well at least we got to see some vintage tin. LOL The week got better after a great last weekend for ya. Know time to get ready for the pile up. I wonder if there is any scenic routes?
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