argh!!!

Post by **maurice** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 11:05 pm

there i was adjusting the mixture which i'd realised was too rich when i had to give my brother a lift to the station. the car was running fine. i switched it off for about 30 minutes then restarted and drove off. got to the bottom of the drive when the car decided to misfire completely and run really badly, jerking forward and having trouble making it up the hill. i've cleaned up the spark plugs and adjusted the gap. fuel pump is fine and carb seems to be working alright too. sparks are getting to the plugs. the distributor isn't cracked and the rotor arm looks fine. when i can start the engine it sort of burps out a few explosions and runs really unevenly and unless i keep it going on the gas it'll die. can anyone help? is it possible that a sudden reduction in the fuel mixture can affect/harm anything in the engine. it doesn't seem to be ignition but then i'm not sure.
please help me as i need to get to work somehow and the RAC will start charging me for calling them out all the time.
cheers guys!

Post by **aupickup** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 11:15 pm

could also be the condensor, i had this problem once, carb was ok and fuel, the engine ran bad and seemed to lack power, so i changed the condensor and all was fine then for 2 years or more, worth atry and even points i guess as well

Post by **Stig** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:38 am

Hmm, sounds like it could be a very weak mixture if it's not condersor/points. Symptoms I've known of manifold air leaks are that it won't idle below, say, 1500 revs and has no "go" and bogs down until high revs and lots of right foot. Any chance the carb or manifold nuts are loose, or has the vacuum advance pipe fallen off (this shouldn't have such a drastic effect though) ?
I have to say that burbs, explosions and jerkiness sounds more like ignition though...

Post by **Cam** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:12 am

Just as a thought, it might have been a sticking choke when you 'set' the mixture. If the jet was not completely back in place then with a bit of vibration it could have 'popped' back in leaving you with a lean mixture. If I were you I would check the mixture again and make sure the choke is off and working properly (not sticking).

Post by **NZJLY** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:10 am

If you have a compression tester, check the compression. I had a similar problem that I couldn't get on top of until I checked the compression and found it didn't have any. (OK it had some, but it sounded more dramatic that way

Post by **maurice** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 6:44 pm

ok cheers guys for all the stuff. an old wise man from the pub came to have a look and after much fiddling about, we worked out that it was a combination of bad fuel mixture, rubbish spark plugs and something else that caused the problems. and i've got a steady cable now, wehey!!!!
thanks again
kim