I took my car out of storage yesterday, and apparentley it didn't fix itself over the winter....last year I tried anything and everything I could think of to get it going but no luck obviousley. I can get it started...takes a few tries and chugs real bad but does actually start, once runnning for the first time it usually will idol around 1,000 and drop down every 4 seconds to 200 and than go back up to 1,000. Once it had warmed up, the car would idol fine, and would rev fine, but if you reved it too much (gave it a quick shot) it would backfire and stall out. If there's any torque behind it, it backfires and stalls as well.

Last year I replaced fuel pump, head gasket (didn't redo the valves though...but none of the rods looked bent), bought a new carb, redid the distributor, new wires and plugs, new supreme gas, checked timing, (water pump looks new) most of which were suggestions by people.

I still want to but don't know how check the timing chain as well as do those valves. I also have a huge hole now in the muffler due to the backfiring (I don't think that would cause enough of a pressure issue to cause concern as it was doing this before the hole).

I bought the car wanting somethin fun, but haven't gotten it on the road since I bought it almost a year ago! When I bought it they told me the reason it was running rough was because it had stale gas from sitting for so many years. I belived them and there goes 6 grand.

Can anyone help so I DON"T have to bring this to the shop. cause I'm definatley out of ideas!

 

Maybe check your balancer? The outter ring might have slipped, making it look like the timing is right, when in fact, its way off.

 

i did a cam swap on my car and i messed up on my valves.. i had the exact same problem. backfires does not idle right and just did not have power. my valves were adjusted incorrectly. i took the valve covers off and reset my valves.

i don't know if you can do it with the car running but thats what i did and i found that it made a huge difference.

 

alright, I don't mind trying either of those, but how do I check to see if my harmonic is correct...also, how do I check my valves... you said while it's running? Basically what am I looking for?

 

what i did

take off the valve covers. start the car DON"T REV the car oil is going to be flowing.
take your ratchet and start with the front valve loosen the rocker arm nut until you hear the rocker arm tap.loosen it kinda slow not too fast. when you hear the tap slowly tighten up until the rocker shuts up. now you are at zero lash. then put your 3/4 of a turn into the nut. do it in 1/4 turn at a time.

then repeat till you have all the valves done.

when i did mine i only took one cover off at a time. just so the other side did not splash oil everywhere. each side will take about 10 mins or so.

 

Better yet, do the loosen part, and the tighten until it shuts up part; then turn the motor off, and add the other ½ turn or ¾ turn or whatever to all 16, with the motor not running.

If you add preload with the motor running, it won't take you long to figure out why it's better to get all 16 to zero lash as quickly as possible, and then add the preload to all 16 with it shut off.

 

that sounds good too. i noticed my motor 's idle evened right out when i readjusted 2 or three of them. i did all of them but i had 2 that where no where even close to right.

 

to be honest you guys make it sound MUCH easier than I'm sure it is, but I think I have the right idea. Only thing I don't understand is how your going to hear the tap if the engine isn't running. I've never taken the covers off of this particular car (first non-***** car I've owned) but is there a point where I can have the nut too loose? I was just afraid of loosening it too much and haveing a rod go through the roof or something haha. Also, if these rockers are moving as I loosen them, will that not be hitting my ratchet and trying to knock it off, or is it not that much power?

Thanks so much guys this is amazing help

 

you will hear it. trust me . as for the rocker forces. they are not that bad. it will not try to kick it off. this is actually very simple. just watch out for the fan and your pully's. other than that it is very simple. you will not get the nut too loose. you can but you won't. you are probebly going to back off the nut about 1 to 1 1/2 turns before it makes noise. then just listen to the noise and tighten down till it shuts up. good luck keep us posted.

 

I know I missed something,but which engine are we talking about? back fire like that could be caused by crossed ignition wires couldn't it? If a cylinder does not get the spark,it does not burn the fuel charge and when the exhaust valve opens it dumps the raw fuel in to the exhaust manifold .I also have seen burned valves and yes poss too tight a valve etc, leak raw fuel into the exhaust that gets ignited by the next hot exhaust coming into the manifold from an operating cylinder.You can go to the library and borrow a book(chilton,haynes etc.) and they have very detailed explanation of how to do hydraulic valve adjustments.Usually with engine not running.(not near as messy)Doing the adjustment with engine off,I usually back off the rocker nut until there is obvious lash between the rocker arm and the valve tip(give the lifter a second to come up as you loosen in case it is down too far) you can lift the end of the rocker off the valve tip and kinda tap it down onto the valve tip and hear it rattle.slowly tighten as you grasp the push rod and move it up and down until the lash lessens, now start twisting the push rod and as you slowly tighten the nut the push rod will stop! Just remember you just take the slack out as you twist the push rod and stop once it starts to get hard to turn, because it will loosen again immediately and you can tighten until you bottom out the lifter.

 

He said that he tried that and i said that this is a way that i did it and i have had better results. the lifters are pumped up with oil and everything is moving. if your timing is off a little you will be off on your tdc. just another way of doing the same thing.

 

Are you sure you got the timing right? You didn't really say what kind of car you have but ground the diagnostic connector or unplug the EST bypass connector at the firewall and adjust the BASE timing to 0-8 BTDC, it depends on your engine mostly, but this should give you a good baseline. Then shut off the engine, unground the terminals or plug the connector and then set your timing advance from there. Is your Service Engine Soon light coming on? If its backfiring then that means its running very rich, the next time you are underneath the car, bang on the catalytic converter and listen to hear for the sound of marbles in there, you should'nt hear anything. You mentioned that you replaced the head gasket, any white smoke coming out the tailpipe? Also check the TPS and ECT if your car has them.

Good luck

 

I was kinda sold a lemon in case y ou can't tell.... this has been going on for around a year now (I refuse to bring it to a shop).

But the engine was originally EFI, than someone took that engine out and put in this one which I'm not sure the name of it, but it has a carb and came out during the time of emissions. It has a few sensors on the carb (apparentley the engine is most likley from a small truck) I got frustrated with that cause I didn't know what was going on and so I put on a new carb that is the standard type. But because of this when I first got the car, the check engine light had tape over it and now I believe is just all around useless, but I'm just assuming.

I would post the engine's numbers, but its in ma gramma's garage..gotta love the gramma's! I'm going this weekend to try all of the fixes that have been posted, so I'll be postin new stuff up next week.

Also, I was recommended by somone to check both compresion as well as the timing chain to see wether its missing a tooth or if its just loose. But I'd only heard that once in all of my troubleshooting, is the chain something that I should bother with (I assume that will take some time as well as be a little messy.)

Thanks

 

I would start with the timing and then go on with other stuff, especially with that situation. What is the deal with the distributor? we bought a truck that the original owner ripped out the efi stuff and put in an impala engine with an HEI module and vacuum advance, to this day i still dont know how the engine runs without the computer, but it does. Make sure that the vacuum advance is hooked up properly to the correct vacuum source, and that it is advancing. Air, fuel, spark...

 

Timing (distributor or timing chain), valve adjustment are the most obvious ones.

Does this car have computer controlled sensors? If so, I'd check out the Coolant Temperature Sensor, if it is broken, disconnected, or otherwise inoperable the computer will DUMP fuel into the car.

 

ok, so I finally got to checkin the car out yesterday. I disconnected the choke and it started much better. It would run fine but again drop idel every few seconds. I checked the timing, I set it to 8* but again...it was pretty much 8 but every few seconds would drop but than come back up. If I reved the engine slowly I would at least get a consistant degree of timing. I checked compression (only on one cyl) but it was at 10. I adjusted the gas needles on the carb cause I was getting white smoke and that didn't really fix it...it was still smokey. But, its only smokey when I start it up for the first few secs. (not sure if thats the temp outside). I checked the plug from that cyl and it was coated in a black powder, if I'm not mistaken, thats from running rich?

 

Just to let you know, there are two types of timing we are talking about, static and dynamic (computer advanced). We are setting around 8* BTDC static timing, which means the computer is not involved in advance, and that is accomplished by disconnecting the EST bypass connector or grounding the ALDL diagnostic terminal to ground. After you do that, stop the engine, unground the terminal or plug back the EST bypass connector and then restart the engine and advance the timing like you would the old fashioned way by turning the distributor.
The black plugs usually are sooty? Yeah its running rich, you might want to pull some others and see what they look like. It may be time for some new plugs, since some bad ones would make it run very poorly. The white smoke coming out the tailpipes could be moisture condensing in the air if its really cold, but it also could have to do with that head gasket. I had a head crack once when the car overheated in this texas heat, and after that it would crank and chug and finally run really rough while white smoke POURED out the tailpipes. The crack was letting water fill into the cylinders overnight and then when i started it it would have to burn up that water to be able to run.
The other thing is that car was originally computer controlled EFI, and now that you and the other owner have modified it, the computer is still expecting to see sensor values from those sensors whether they are there or not. You might want to pull some trouble codes (do a search) and figure out what the computer is thinking (if the computer is still connected). The computer controlled carbuerators had a Throttle Position sensor which is important in timing and fuel delivery, you need to do some homework to get this engine running buddy....If you get a chance and have a digital camera, take some pictures of the engine and post them on here.