the needle is steel not rubber so i carefully sanded the point back to shape and i tweaked the floats very slightly which maybe i will undo once i get the specs for their level. now after putting in points, the right plugs (p.o. had totally wrong plugs in) new cap, rotor, and leads, the flippin car goes like hell no more fumbling at high rpm it will sweep right to the max and pulls hard into the next gear. new issue surfaced of hesitating slightly on sudden acceleration (probably the float thing). i still want to kit the carb, but this will tie me over. thanks again everyone!
OK, I guess it's good to keep the sixer......It's paid for, and it is a good conversation piece. More fun driving than wrenching......
Am too. I took that gal back to her folks once and dropped her off. It took me longer to raise traveling money than I thought it would and her folks figured out where I was crashing. I came home and there she sat on my door step. Damn the luck. Rule of thumb on float adjustment when you don't know is for the float to be level when the needle is seated. Just look at it and use a little common sense. Your stumble may be the accelerator pump. At least that is what I would guess at first blush.
put floats level and the stumble at wide open throttle happens again. took the accelerator pump out and soaked the leather in light weight oil and kneaded it a bit. that seems to have rid me of the hesitation on acceleration. have to move the floats back down a bit again, that setting makes a difference in the high speed fumble. gonna go for a run with a local c.c. maybe tommorow
after an entire day of madness on the road including resetting the float level on the side of an intersection and pulling over about eight times to mess with settings i have made a breakthrough! the engine runs awesome on 89 octane and runs like a pig on 87 octane. i have been trying to get the flattie to run well on crap gas. just put a tank of 89 in and no more fumbling at high speed.
Now I'm curious. Could you play with the timing to get the engine to like 87? Or is there more to it?
Octane is a strange bird. Detonation is the disease, octane is the cure - if the cure works you have the disease. High speed fumbles, stumbles, - hesitation, carb flat spots , - and detonation should be easy to distinguish. Detonation is usually caused by high compression or high cylinder pressures. High by design, added boost, or crud built up in the combustion chamber. That crude us carbon and gets hot compounding matters. If your high by design you now know you need to run 89 or maybe even 92 is worth a tank full to experiment. If its high from crud, you could try seafoam or the water method to get rid of some of the build up.
yeah i seafoamed the engine twice now. poured it in thhe carb once and sucked it through the vaccuum line the last time. i need to make sure the timing marks are really the actual right position, they never work. with these engines you cant see the piston at tdc because the spark plugs are over the valves so i may be reduced to the measuring scenario.
Wait til dark - run car spray mist from a squirt bottle in engine compartment and around cap and wires the mist will help expose a voltage leak from bad wires or cap. And yeah sort the carb first Poverty leaves an impression
Yeah, cheap gas can cause all kinds of stumbles and hesitation. We spend so much on our toys, why do we cheap out on the gas? Use mid-grade or better from a busy major and save yourself some unnecessary headaches.
The Jalopy Journal
