I have an 87 with a quadra-jet. When driving the car cold, if I give it too much gas the car either stalls or tries to stall. I'm pretty sure that it isn't the secondaries because I have them adjusted pretty tight. When the car warms up it has plenty of power. When it doesn't stall when cold it will all of the sudden rev and just take off. I've been having this problem for a while so I swapped in a different carb, but that only helped a little. The timing is set correctly. Where do I look?
On a side note, I didn't mix the antifreeze correctly because I had a leak this summer and just replaced with water. This caused it to freeze this winter. I just had to move it across town and over heated the engine to the point where the coolant was boiling out the overflow tank. When I finally got where I was going the engine still ran fine, I think. What's the worst I could have done? warped the heads? The anti freeze wasn't leaking from the block, so the freeze plugs are still in.
I have to drive this car 150 miles or so this coming weekend, so help is greatly appreciated

 

I was doing a little more research and I think that I need to adjust my IAB. In the E4ME sticky They talk about adjusting the IAB until the "dwell" is around 30 deg. What is the Dwell? Is this the ignition timing mark?

 

bump

 

Do you have a snorkel-type air cleaner on it? If so, is the vacuum door system working?

It's not the secondary air valve adjustment. It's locked out until the engine warms up (choke fully opens).

The IAB adjustment is made with a dwell meter attached to that green electrical connector that doesn't connect to anything. You can also use a scan tool on the ALDL for a 50% MCS duty cycle.

What's the worst you could have done? Cracked the block in the lifter valley. They tend to crack there before the "freeze plugs" pop. When you overheated, warp the heads.

 

How do I know if I cracked the block? What is an ALDL? MCS is mixture controll solenoid right? The engine seemed to run all right last night except for the hesitation and over heating. The coolant temperature sensor never reported over 230 degrees ( I made a couple stops to let it cool down I was already too far to turn back when I realized I was in trouble). There was probably no coolant to transfer the heat to the sensor though. I'm going to drain fluid and try to melt ice in the radiator tonight.

 

ALDL - https://www.thirdgen.org/service-eng...ht-error-codes - Called DLC there.

You'll know you cracked the block when the oil turns milky white.

 

Thanks. This has been helpful.
How do I use the ALDL/DLC to check the MCS duty cycle though. I ahven't bought a dwell meter or scan tool yet. Would the Actron that AutoZone carries work? (El-cheapo = $60 yikes)

 

No, you need something that reads live data, like http://www.actron.com/product_detail.php?pid=16318 . Cheaper http://www.amazon.com/Actron-CP9180-.../dp/B000KG8KB0 . Need to buy the OBD I cable as well, probably download software.

 

When I said yikes, I was saying "Wow that's expensive". Not made of money here, I guess that I will go the dwell meter route. Thanks for the help. I'll ask if I get stuck while trying to adjust the carb with the dwell meter.