Hello everyone, first, I have been searching, furiously and I am ready to rip out what hair I have left. I don't know if I am using the wrong keywords, or if I'm just incompetent.

I inherited a 1991 Camaro RS. It is rust free, never been driven in anything other than sun (from the story that was passed onto me)

The engine, I was told, is a 355 crate engine with a Holley Dominator intake and a Quick Fuel HR 650 carb.

My issues are as follows:

The vehicle will start almost instantly without any issues at all, but will very quickly start idling rough, if I give it gas it will start to bog. If i put it into gear, it dies almost immediately. I am assuming I have some sort of vacuum issue, or something along those lines. But I can not for the life of me find any vacuum diagram that even remotely looks close to the cluster**** I have going on in that engine bay. Whomever put the engine together seems to know a little of what they were doing, I found receipts for the carb being installed, previous owner paid about $1500 for the carb to be put on) But I have seen rabbit nests that look more organized than this engine bay, hell, my beard after waking up in the morning looks more organized,

I am losing my mind with this stupid thing. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the previous owner has got going on with the wiring and vacuum tubing. There are things capped off, and re routed. I plan to just re do the entire system, but like I said, I can't find anything that looks even remotely close to what he had going on.

I beg, please help...I can run out and take photos if need be.

 

Probably not a "vacuum issue".

Sounds like a fuel problem to me. Inadequate fuel delivery to the carb.

What is the fuel pump arrangement? Electric pump in the tank still there and operating? Mechanical one on the block?

Did they put in a distributor with vacuum advance?

There should only be a handful of vac lines in your setup. There weren't many to begin with, for that matter. A photo would help.

 

There is a mechanical one on the block. I am unsure if there is an electrical one still in the tank or not.

I will take photos and post them for you. The distributor does have a vacuum advance on it.

I will also preface with, I know a decent amount about vehicles, enough to keep them running once they currently run, but getting them to actually run is not a strong suit for me. I want to learn and be handy, but I am so incredibly thankful for this forum. Let me run out and grab some photos now and I will post again shortly.

 

Also, sorry about the photo size, my god they are huge.

 

So, as always, and per normal, they hacked the AC off. What a effing drag.

Looks like they didn't put a bolt in the hole that leaks.



Put a SHORT bolt in that hole; maybe ½" long, with a drop of sealer on the threads. If you look up into it first, you'll see the fuel pump rod. In a lot of motors, if the pump rod isn't there, you'll see the crank. It's no wonder you have oil ALL OVER the lower right area of the engine bay.

Then take it to the quarter car wash; stop at a parts store along the way and buy acoupla cans of engine degreaser (diesel fuel in a spray can); when you get there, pull it into the bay, shut it off, and let it sit for a bit; DRENCH the whole motor with the degreaser, from every possible angle including underneath in front, underneath from both sides, in the wheel wells, down behind the alt, etc. etc. etc; and wash all that schmutz off of it, so that it at least looks like somebody that gives a s*** owns it now. Even if not before.

They did a pretty decent looking job of hooking up the choke. Does it work?

Is there a vac line going to the distributor?

The thing in your hand is the cruise control cable. It should go to a stud on the carb, somewhat similar to where the throttle cable goes, except the cruise one is usually about an inch and a half tall. No idea of course whether any of that is in working condition; anybody that would HACK the AC off, probably thought that HACKING the cruise control was an "improvement" too, so who knows.

Don't worry about the evap canister. Clean up some of the bigger messes first.

There might be 2 vac lines tied up in the HVAC harness, which comes through the firewall near the heater hoses. One is the vac "supply" to the control head, which the controls then send to various diaphragms under the dash that control where the air comes out. Some cars, I think including yours, have a vac controlled heater valve as well, that closes off coolant flow under the dash (for heat) when it's not needed. The 90° in your hand appears to be tied into some one of those. That'll take some debugging, to figure out what it's hooked to, whether it's right, where the other one is, etc.

If there's still an electric pump in the tank, that's probably at the root of your driveability problem.

 

Thanks so much for the help. I made an attempt to get the vehicle from the side of my garage into the garage to more easily work on it.... and ran into another issue. It started up fine, idled okay(ish) until I decided to put it into reverse to back out of the parking spot.

I have 0 throttle response. I can push the pedal down, I can manually push the throttle level, I took te air cleaner off and I can see gas being sprayed into the carb. However the engine does nothing for increasing RPM's. My first thought was that I screwed up the transmission some how in my trying to clean up the disaster of an engine bay. But when I couldn't get it to rev even in park I became more worried.

What size is that hole? If you happen to know off hand, I have a pile of bolts various sizes so I hope I can find something that works.

Without dropping the tank... is there anyway I can check to see if there is a pump still there? Is there an access cover inside the "trunk" area?

I was expecting to do a ton of body work on this vehicle not mechanical work. So I'm bummed and feel in over my head.

Since it is a 1991, I'm assuming it had a 5.0 TPI? It now has a 355 in it, and if you say they hacked off the A/C it makes me wonder what else was wrongly done.

Backstory: I got the car for free and found receipts for various work done to it. In October of 2019 the Quick Fuel HR 650 carb was installed and per the receipt work order a "road test was done" and it passed. So somehow from October to now when I got it, it's become a hot mess...

Would more pictures help at all? I can try and crawl under it and take some photos and such.

 

The bolt is 3/8" - 16.

Looks to me like it was TBI; throttle body injection.

No access hole. Don't even.

Definitely sounds like a fueling problem. Not enough fuel making it up to the carb. You can troubleshoot easily enough by unplugging the primary wire to the distributor, removing the fuel line from the carb, putting it over some kind of a bucket or something, and cranking it. See how much comes out. I'm going to guess you'll see acoupla good squirts, then it'll tail off to nothing.

 

So I found a vacuum line that seemed to reach the distributor. So I attached that vacuum line to the distributor and low and behold, I now have throttle response. I was able to keep gas going to it enough to move it from the side of my garage into the garage so I can more easily figure out what the heck is going on. I would lose every drag race against a 6 year old on a tricycle though. But hey, it moves... kinda...

I found a bolt tat was about an 3/4 of an inch long that threaded into that hole perfectly. However I did not have any thread sealant, so right now it is just threaded in.

I located a map sensor (I think) that had a tube coming out from it that didn't connect to anything. The exhaust looks custom made and very little wear on it, did not see any 02 sensors at all, or even any bungs welded on for 02 sensors to be screwed in. The map sensor is useless then is it not? I can remove it to clear clutter from the engine bay?

I had my girlfriend hop in the car and crank it over and I have gas that comes out. She also presses the gas pedal and gas squirts into the carb. But not a lot. Is there a fuel pressure regulator for a mechanical pump? I'm still not sure about the electic pump in the tank. I don't want to drop the tank just to look. Is there some sort of clip somewhere outside or around or some wires I can clip and cap off so at least the electric pump (if there is one) isn't functioning?

 

Yeah anything related to the computer functions is now useless, except for the fuel pump relay, if that pump is still there.

You should be able to hear the pump if it's in there and running. If it's not running, then about the only way to tell anything about it, would be to drop the tank.

 

In this picture , I can see there is just about no fuel in the front float bowl , I believe the level should be at the halfway point of the sight glass ....

 

PS ,
Since you say it's a 700R4 , and thinking about these two posts , I'm left to wonder what , if any , accommodations have been made to allow the torque converter clutch to function ?

 

Alright, so tuning the carb. I can adjust the float, do I adjust it. Start it shut it off and check? And repeat until gas is halfway?

You also mentioned torque converter clutch... i know what those are individually... but dunno about this car what was done.

 

The hose nipple with the little red cap on it is probably the one that's supposed to go to the distributor; but no doubt you can obtain instructions for that sort of thing from Quick Fuel.

Similarly, they'll tell you how to adjust the float. But in general, it's going to be something like, with the car running on level ground, loosen the big brass screw on the top front of the carb A LITTLE BIT while holding that big nut still with a wrench; then while holding the screw still with your screwdriver, adjust the big nut (which controls the needle valve height) A LITTLE BIT until you see fuel partway up the sight glass; then while holding the nut still at that spot, re-tighten the screw. If you loosen that screw too much, or don't hold it still while turning the nut, gas can spray everywhere, so BE CAREFUL. I'm going to guess that the right fuel level is going to be halfway up the sight glass. You'll need to adjust it a little, wait a few seconds for the fuel level to stabilize, adjust a little more, wait, etc. It's MUCH easier to get a good adjustment if you start out with the level too low and let the fuel pump fill up the carb as you adjust the level up, than to let it get too high and then have to wait for the motor to idle however much gas out of the bowl to bring it down. CW on the nut lowers the level, CCW raises it, so you'll want to try turning it CCW maybe ½ of one flat of the nut that way at a time, until the level gets up to the right spot.

The TCC will need some method of telling it to engage in high gear and high vacuum. That's about like the evap canister though; it can wait. Get the thing to where the motor can at least run and drive before tackling that.

What did they do about the throttle valve cable linkage?