Recently purchased my first Firebird Trans am. It's an 84 with the 5.0 liter high output with 5 speed manual. searched this forum and others for days for answers to the problems with the car haven't found any for my situation. I had the car towed home as the brake power booster was bad. first thing I had to do was replace the clutch master cylinder and slave cylinder because tow truck drive scrapped the slave cylinder on the truck bed. the guy I bought it from didn't seem to have a clue what he was doing with the car first off he eliminated all the smog equipment, replaced the stock intake with an edelbrock victor jr 2975 intake and a holley 80457 carburetor and cut the exhaust off from the header back also when he replaced the intake and carb he left the stock computer controlled distributor installed.


I replaced the exhaust, replaced the distributor with a vacuum advance one and set the timing properly made adjustments to carb (car wouldn't idle under 1500 rpm's) so now my problem when the car is running I get smoke from the tail pipe not a thick smoke and not enough to really say what color it is but if your standing behind the car long enough it will sting your eyes and nose, car runs great and drives like a raped ape so my question is, is this normal with the aftermarket parts installed or is the carb too much for the engine, or was the engine hurt from the misadjustments made by the previous owner or am I over looking something?

 

Not really a lot of info to work with there, especially without even having the color of the smoke. How many miles on the engine? Does it smoke just on start up or even after a long drive? Personally if it's not enough to even tell what color it is I wouldn't be worried about it. Has the carb been adjusted properly? The aftermarket parts are always the first thing I would check.

 

the engine has around 153,000 miles, I adjusted the carbs about as best as I could but still cannot get it to idle properly adjusted idle mixture screws by vacuum got it to idle at 900 rpm's but that's with the idle screw adjusted all the way out. timing is set at 6 degrees below tdc per catalyst. what adjustments were made to carb before me I can't tell you. as far as the smoke it is constant unless I have my foot in it then it doesn't smoke at all.

 

pull your plugs and check each. if you have one or two that are sooty and oily, you've likely got an intake manifold leak there. would explain the high idle as well.

 

went out today and checked the plugs all of them seemed to look good but I did notice there was some smoke coming from what appeared to be between the intake and the block but with all the oil on the front of the engine I can't tell. the attached pictures show where I see the smoke coming from on the engine and what the smoke looks like out of the tail pipe. I did check the radiator and oil, radiator is full with nothing mixed in and oil is 1 qt low but I attribute that to the oil leak from the timing chain cover.

 

Out of curiosity, does any smoke come out of the dipstick when it's running? That would be a sign of a bad piston ring. Maybe time to do a compression test?

 

no smoke out of the oil dipstick.

 

just went out to check the oil and getting a very strong smell of gas.

 

Try spraying carb cleaner around the intake manifold gasket. If you here it idle differently when you do, it's a vacuum leak there. I'm running out of ideas lol. That smoke looked to me like it had a blueish hue, so I'm guessing that's oil burning. As far as a gas smell, it could also have to do with the carb. Dunno there, never worked on one myself. Smelling gas could be anything from a bad gas cap to a clogged emissions canister (think that's what its called), the black canister under the hood.

 

I'll try the carb cleaner tomorrow as far as the gas smell the smell is coming from the oil. when I first got the car number 6 and number 8 plugs were backwards on the distributor so changed them around and ran better but not sure if that caused the carb to run too rich or not so going to change oil as well tomorrow and see what happens.

 

talked to a gentleman at edelbrock today who told me that the intake and carburetor setup on my car was too much for the engine and that the carb is flooding out the engine. he recommended edelbrock intake 2701 and edelbrock carb 1403 for my car. what do you guys think is telling me right or is he full of it?

 

If your engine is stock, then I'd say he's right about the intake (the Victor Jr. is a single plain, I believe, and for a street car, not as versatile as a dual plane like the Performer), but if your carb is the one linked below, a 600 CFM, elec. choke, vac. secondary model, I would think that would be about ideal for a small block. If setup out-of-the-box for a 350 (likely), it might be jetted a little rich for a 305, but I would not think carb. replacement would be necessary.

https://www.holley.com/products/fuel...parts/0-80457S

 

I agree with the manifold the carb is probably jetted rich for a stock 305 but I think it could work out. I would probably get some sort of dual plane like the RPM performer or regular performer / EPS depending on your future plans then follow the holly tuning sticky after you get things sorted out.

What is you timing set at? Where are you connecting vacuum advance ported or full time?