Pickup woes

[JSimons]

Hello all,

Having some trouble with my pickup. Little background.

Monday, car was running absolutely fine, no worries.

Then tuesday, the car was running okay, but slower to rev and was stalling at junctions.

Wednesday, running on two cylinders, throttle makes no difference apart from keeping it running, and its undriveable.

I've had the plugs out, cleaned them up completely, checked all the HT leads, replaced the lead from the coil to distributor, cleaned the distributor cap, ensuring it was all dry, checked for cracks, changed rotor arm, all to no avail. I've also ran a compression test, and compression on the cylinders was all very similar, 9 bar on cylinder 1&2, and 8.5 bar on the back two.

Then yesterday i noticed exhaust gases all up the carburettor side of the rocker cover, but can't work out where exactly it's coming from, whether from the manifold itself, between the manifold and the head, or what.

I can't really understand whats going on, i considered the manifold gasket, but then i thought that the car would still run if the gasket had gone on an exhaust outlet?

The weather has been awful this week, lots and lots of rain, wind, etc so not sure whether the changes in temperature have caused something to crack, or a gasket to go.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Sorry if it's a blindingly obvious answer, I'm slowly moving along the learning curve

Regards

Joe

[mike.perry]

Have you tried running the engine, turn the tickover up if necessary, and pulling the leads off the plugs to see which cylinders are still firing?

[bmcecosse]

I would say blown head gasket - but the comp check suggests otherwise. Sorry if it sounds annoying - but did you reset the gauge to zero before each test? Have a look at the valve gaps - and the points gap. Any chance you have swapped over two plug leads without realising?? Should be 1342 anti-clock around the dizzy cap.

[JSimons]

I reset the tester after each cylinder.

Definitely didn't swap the leads round as the issues all started without having had the bonnet up.

I'll try to find out which cylinders are not firing.

Thanks for the relies

[Pikey]

Try replacing the condensor?

I had a similar misfire last year.

Cheers

Steve

[JSimons]

Turns out the float chamber was so full of crud that barely any fuel was getting through. Obviously a piece had dislodged and stopped fuel flow. So whipped it all off, stripped it down and gave it a damn good cleaning. Put it back on and voila, back to normal.

[bmcecosse]

Well done - great success!