Ok guys as the title says the motor has tons of little backfires when driving. In the morning when I start the car and let her idle, she has a few little backfires, but they always go away. Well the other day I was driving home from work and she started to backfire, now when ever im driving and I give her any gas there are a billion continues little backfires. She’s getting crapy performance to. I can’t give her hard gas at all or shell backfire real bad, any ideas

 

Myself i would try changing the plugs and wires if that dosent work youre valves might be too tight or loose i would check those.

 

Try checking each plug wire before replacing - using an ohm meter check the continuity on each. Check the plugs, coil, rotor, cap also. In my little bit of experience most backfires are ignition related.

 

perhaps your distributor has moved,loose cap, burnt wire.vacum maybe.

 

i just put new cap and wires on. anything else that i should look for. what could i have done wrong when i replaced them

 

the only thing that i can think of when you replaced them is maybe crossing one or more trace #1 down and go from there the firing order is1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

 

Exhaust roccker WAY loose (like, fallen off); head gasket blown between #5 & #7

 

ok now im worried. my rocker arm are ticking pretty bad on that side. i just found that the number 6 plug wire has a burn on it and i could see where the spark was tucking the dip stick when the car was running. you think that could be it or something. the rocker arms when i last checked where on good. they didnt see like they where falling off or anything close to it. i dont have any eletrical tape to tape it up, will RTV silacone work?

 

RTV will work as a patch, sorta. Actually once a High Voltage wire arcs, it burns the conductor which damages it. It will need to be replaced.

 

so if i patch it, will it work or is the wire dead as of now

 

I'd replace it. AND - I'd check the continuity of the new wire(s) BEFORE I installed them - can't tell you how many bad wires I've gotten new out of the box. Also double check that firing order as mentioned above, and make sure all the plug boots are on the plugs good - I had a boot that appeared to be fully on, but wouldn't stay there, causing a backfire - I had to reach inside with needle nose pliers and crimp the end in the boot slightly to make it stay on the plug tighter.

 

i know the firing order is right, i just went and put some rtv on the new burned wire. as far as i know everyting looks ok but the wire. anymore ideas

 

The wire may still work, but that doesn't mean that it's a good wire. The deal is that the conductor inside the insulation is certainly burned now. To what degree... who knows. What this means is that there is now a resistive spot in the wire that will either arc inside the insulation, or just continue to get worse (more resistive) over time.

It will need to be replaced as soon as possible.

 

so you think that could have been my problem with the billion little
backfires. now these backfires are very little. but you can feel them when your driving

 

That's hard to say... High voltage arcing to the dip stick.... That would have produced a lot of electrical noise, which the ECM may not have liked, and the ignition module may not have liked, but I don't see how it would have caused a backfire, let alone a billion of em'.... It seems to me that the coil would not have liked discharging almost directly to ground....

I think that you should give the patch a try. See if it still backfires, if not , then head on down to an auto parts store to buy a new wire set.

 

if you can switch with a proper length wire (maybe #8) and then trim the burnt part off and reboot it..............crude but it'll get you by....

 

thanks man, and everyone. one more thing, about the head gasket. how do i tell if that has gone out with out pulling off the head

 

If it's blown only between 5 & 7 I think you'd have to do a compression test to find it. Other typical symptoms are oil in the water or vise versa or water vapor (steam) coming out of the exhaust while running.

 

ok this sucks guys, its kinda cold outside right now. its like 51 outside. i cant tell if its steam or smoke, it kinda smokes when i start her. not a lot

 

hey if the carb was running really rich would that do it?

 

They all kinda smoke when it's cold outside. If it's steam you would know... BIG white stuff.

If you don't have water in the oil, or oil in the water that's good. Do a compression check when you have time, it takes some time though. You have to pull all the plugs out first, do all the tests, then replace all the plugs. It's a good time to do this test when you are changing the spark plug wires anyway, since pulling the boots off often ruins some of the connectors. You should measure about 160 psi +/- 5% or so on all cylinders. Charge the battery after doing the first bank of cylinders if you have a charger handy.

 

ok well i tested the car just a momment ago, shes running better, by all mean not good but better. a lot of the backfiring has gone away but there are still a few littel ones when driving. she has really poor performance. when i give her gas she starts to go but i feel like shes trying "really" hard. if i put her in park and slowly rev her to 2000rpms shell backfire once every say 4 to 9 secons. not hard backfires but i know its not good at all.

 

Sounds to me like the time an exhaust lobe went flat on a 1981 caprice I had. It was very low on power, and when I opened up the secondaries, there was a very noticable backfiring that sounded like a machine gun coming through the carb.

 

maybe you should try changing your plugs cause with all the missfires you might have fouled out the plugs try a cr45ts in your car.

 

about the spark pluges, how do i change them when i have headers on, thats was my plan today, i was going to change the plugs but the headrs got in the way. any ideas

 

You will probably have to change them from under the car. I know there are a few on my Bird that I cannot change from the top with headers.