...The free kind! Don't you just love those times when you uncover some power you didn't know you had? In the past few months, my gas mileage had been steadily going to hell. It got ridiculous in the last couple of weeks. Finally it started coughing through the carb when I gave it a lot of pedal from a stop. I looked under the hood Friday night and saw my primary accelerator pump was wet, so I just knew that was the culprit; not getting a pump shot on takeoff, diaphragm leaking, etc. and I was going to need to rebuild the carb. I didn't have time to look at it though, so I parked it for the weekend. Last night I did decide to take a look, and I could see fuel around the inlet on the secondary bowl. Sure enough, it was loose. I tightened it. The accelerator pumps were fine, the leak was fixed. Since I was on a roll I decided to adjust the floats. Naturally I got gas everywhere when I did this. Once that was done I looked down the carb and gave the throttle a good blip to see if the stumble was still there, and BANG! I could see quite a little blast coming up through the primary bore on the left side, and that's when I shut it off. Thinking about all that fuel on top of the engine, I glanced up to make sure my fire extinguisher was still on the wall, and I started thinking. Timing. Got to be the timing. I had a mark on the distributor from when I'd set the timing before, where I knew it was right. But since the AC swap had made it so difficult to reach the distributor hold-down bolt, I left it just loose enough so that I could move the distributor if I had to. This, apparently, was a mistake. Over time, the distributor had shaken itself into a state of retardation. I put it back where it belonged, wiped up the fuel and started it up. Instantly the idle was a lot higher, so I backed the idle screw out a little. Put it in gear, turned the AC on, and was pleased to see the idle didn't go down much. It had been going down quite a bit, but now it was idling like it did when I first installed the AC. I put it back in park, turned the AC off and gave the throttle a quick punch. It instantly shot up with no hesitation at all. In fact the sound it made shocked me. Here's the best part. Although there's no telling how long my timing has been wrong, I can tell you I have not checked it since before I got the 1.7 roller rockers or even the double pumper. I had been pretty happy with the throttle response and the amount of power it had, but I realized I had apparently never actually felt the full benefit of those two upgrades. When I took that thing out on the road last night after those adjustments, it felt like a whole other car. I have never felt it pull as hard as it does now. It feels absolutely brutal even compared to a couple of weeks ago when I thought it was running right. I am highly pleased.
Isnt that a great feeling when things come together?? I left my brothers last night so I did my usual burnout for his boys. (lives in the sticks) Only got about 10 feet of rubber then lousy acceleration. Took me a few seconds to figure out I left in 2nd gear.Phew I thought something was terribly wrong for a second or two. Stopped around the corner and let her go in the proper gear this time. Much better, all fixed.
That's so cool. I enjoy the little gains when I sit in the garage in tinker around with the car. THAT is my relaxation! Now the never ending four year long sitting on jackstands not even bein able to fire up the motor with pieces sitting all over the garage not knowing if any part of this stupid car will ever run again...but I digress...
