[DML] FINALLY----ITS ALIVE

[mike clemens <rmclemns@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks John H, David T, Greg and everybody else that gave me ideas of what I could try to get Josh's Beast to run properly.  I had read before that with this car, it never seems to be one thing, but a combination of several.  This was very true in this case.  It appears that "when" the PO had something go wrong with the car, he worked around it as best he could without buying any new parts.  Here's an example:  he removed the electrical solenoid that controls the vacuum to the distributor when it went bad.  He then decided he needed vacuum advance to the distributor so he put a direct line to it from a manifold tee.  Now the car is idling to fast so he screws with the idle mixture screw and retards the timing.  I'm as surprised as anyone that I got it running at all.

Here's everything I found bad and replaced in order.  The idle speed motor, the warm up regulator, the timing was at 8 degrees and was reset to 13 degrees, and the mixture was adjusted.  I initially turned it 1/8 turn CCW and it helped so much that I went another 1/8 turn.  The car now idles at 800 rpm with only a hint of hunting (maybe 25rpm).  I can get full throttle without having to do anything extra, as before.  I still get a tiny bit of hesitation every now and then and a small backfire if I really try to punch the throttle, but on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say it's about an 8 now.

I took it up and down my driveway a half dozen times and it seems to want to run, but before I try to get it out to the paved road, I've got to do a bit of clutch work.  The last thing I want to do is get stranded way down the road and have to have the wife come and tow me home!  :-)

I just finished cleaning the plugs (all six were covered with black soot from running too rich).  I'm going to run it up to operating temp and then pull the plugs again to see how they look.

Thanks to everyone who offered their ideas and I'll probably be back with something new, after I get out on the highway.  One thing I would like to pass on to anyone with similar problems:  Fix one component at a time, crank up the car and see what happens.  Record this and then go on and fix the next component in the system.  Trying to fix too many things at one time leaves a bunch of questions as to which item fixed what.

Mike   TPS   1630


      

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