Many of you might remember the copper T bucket that Evil T and I finished building recently (the one with the single motorcycle style windshield). Well, we had the thing all built, fired it up...327 Vette motor with Power Pack heads. Took all day to get it to fire up and run. Ran hot and would stall if you threw it into gear and didn't mash on the gas. We then began thrashing through the motor to try to figure out what the problem was: Carb...floats, leaks, etc...nope Intake...small vac leak up front...no biggie Dizzy....maybe the timing gear is damaged...wrong Points, gone...Electronic, Crane ok, switched to Pertronix, no joy Bad flow from small valves, switch to 194 heads....lots of time, no help Torque Convertor locking up, convertor is brand new...hair is beginning to come out about now Timing Chain...fresh and lined up We spend days ladies and gentlemen and failed every time. Sometimes our solutions actually made the car worse. And those were really fun days. I will say on the other end of the whole experience, the car purrs like a kitten now that we figured and fixed it. To review: Fresh 327 with 194 heads Good turbo 350 with a new convertor Good electronic iggys fresh intake brand new carb new lifters, springs, rockers, and pushrods Would not run without lots of gas under load, but would run and would idle out of gear. Anybody wanna see if they can figure out the problem faster than we did? True
everytime i've seen it happen like that its been a carburetor issue. not enough fuel at idle. throttle blades closed too much at idle? idle mixture too lean? does the thing have a choke??
Manual choke, functioning fine. Switched out the brand new Holley 650 for a Carter afb, still no joy, went back to the holley. It was not a carb issue, though that is what I thought is was. We adjusted floats, played with the choke, looked at angle, jets, venturi...and on and on. It was something else
That one was destined to be a wrong answer as it was your post #666. We had plugs on them all and when we found a slight slip in the intake gasket, we pulled the intake and resealed it. True
Believe it or not we changed the advance on the distributor (as it was bad but not the cause) and were running a resistor with the crane as it calls for one and removed it for the pertronix as it does not.
Pulled the cover and double checked, sprokets lined up and chain fresh. As to plugs, same problem with two sets of wires and two different sets of plugs, the power pack heads used the larger plug and they were fresh. The 194s used peanuts, they were also new. Thank you to everyone for playing along so far...I am bored this evening as my fiance is off on her bachelorette weekend at a location I refuse to disclose to you guys.
Seems you kep saying you put new parts in. Try known good parts out of a good running engine. start with a good POINTS distributor. I din't see where the convertor was good, just new. coold still be bad as could the transmission. Put the carb on another same size engine and adjust the idle then swap it on, should at least be close. Idle speed/mix, hung up trans parts or timing/bad ignition is my guess. Does it backfire when it quits?
Sorry Dr. I guess you missed the first part. We finally figured out what the problem was. I get that New and Good are not always synonymous, but in this case, they are. The carb is groovy and the problem, as much as it seemed to be an ignition/timing one was actually caused by a third, and pretty obscure source. This is more of an intellectual exercise rather than what I usually do which is find a problem and beg wiser minds (as can often be found here) for help.
I'll try: Leaky head gasket? Step dad had that happen once on a pile of **** daily driver. Stuck brake drum/ emergency brake?
My turn....bird's nest in the air cleaner? Emergency brake still on? Neighbor's cat wrapped around fan belt? Ground cable made from plastic lanyard you made at summer camp in 1974? Am I close?
Wrong or no oil in the gearbox? Thats just a stab in the dark, but who knows it could be the one. How did i do? Cheers Roland
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOO long of push rods OR big alum rockers and short valve covers, not letting valves close properly. If it needed lots of gas, it musta had too much air in the cyls.
Faulty PCV valve? Bad ignition condeser? I've heard that there's been a rash of bad ones in my neighborhood....
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