I'm about ready to just give up on this car. Okay so I'm use to little problems with it here and there but this was completely random.

So I get up and as usual, seems to always take a few minutes to get running when its cold out, probably choke problem. Anyway I get her warmed up and get going and when I stop at stop signs then normally give it alittle gas it hesitates.

I'm like eh okay. So throughout the day it actually gets worse. So I'm cruising and it starts to sputter out and it dies. Seriously? So I start it back up, hard start when warm? Okay...get back to school. After school I get in it start and back up, it tries to die. Then I finally get out and it dies. So I start it back up and by this point I just keep gas on it ti'll I get home. Which I made it to my street and it died before I got home...takes a few minutes to start and by then its running rough I get home pop the hood and its leaking gas from the linkages on the carb.

Great. So I took it apart and took it out. I measured the floats and they were fine upside down but the drop was like 1.24"+ So I readjusted them back to 15'16"-1". I did clean the sparkplugs as-well.

Seriously if it was those 2 things all along then it wouldn't of ran fine enough to drive on the daily basis. So my question is...why all of sudden does it want to run like this?

So yeah I finally got it idling fine but as soon as I want to drive and stop so does its urge to want to die. I'm about ready to sell this mother ****er. Sorry for the language but it just makes me so mad.

 

Make sure you don't have any vacuum leaks, is the egr still hooked up? If so, disable it & retest.

 

I don't believe that's been hooked up to the carb since I got rid of the qjet.

But what would that have to do with the fuel leak at linkages with the floats adjusted per manual?

 

I don't know, maybe it wasn't adjusted right to begin with. I was asking the Q after you got the float adjusted & still have a running problem.

 

Hmmm...I really hope I can get this mess figured out before Monday

 

You didn't have a float adjustment problem.
You probably have water in your fuel.
Water will form ice crystals in your fuel and will jam the needle/seat open and cause flooding until the temp warms up enough.
Check your needles. If there is no obstruction when you check, yet they still flood, then it's likely due to ice crystals.

Also when it's near freezing outside and you have problems with the engine wanting to die after you've coasted up to a stop, it's due to the idle circuit icing up.

Things that make these two problems worse:

Aftermarket aluminum intake manifolds
Blocking the exhaust heat crossover to the intake
Carb spacers, - especially plastic ones
Removal of the thermac heat-stove tube that supplies warm air to carb.
Excess moisture in fuel.
Cold t-stat and/or functional cowl hood

Easy things you can do:

Fuel stabilizer and a little Acetone in the fuel
Draw in warm intake air from the heat-stove on the exhaust manifold -(factory air-cleaner housing)

Tips:
*If you have a lot of excess moisture in your fuel you can usually pull the air-horn from the carb and look down in the fuel bowls and observe water at the bottom of the bowls.
*If you've fuel fowled your spark plugs, just cleaning them is often not enough. You should use a Propane torch to cook the tips for about a minute each to get the fuel out of the porous ceramic.
*Keeping the fuel tank as full as possible in winter will cut down on the amount of moisture condensing in making its way to the bottom of your tank.

*Learn how to clean out ALL of the air-bleeds on your carburetor, and clean them at least twice per year as normal maintenance to avoid running problems. Because of Ethanol in our fuel, the air bleeds in an aluminum carb tend to clog up with corrosion relatively quickly, and that will cause running problems. The bleeds are very small, and so moisture icing up will also cause problems, especially if they already have some corrosion in them.

*When you run an aluminum carburetor on an aluminum intake manifold, then you'll need to run a warm-air intake like the factory air-filter housing with the thermac (heat-stove) valve if you plan to drive in cold climates.
The process of fuel metering causes a 40 - 60*F drop in temperature, so even it it's still a bit above freezing outside you can still get icing in the carburetor if you aren't adding any heat to the carb or intake air. Factory air-cleaner housings are designed to make this happen.

*The more alcohol in the fuel, the more temperature drop in the carburetor.

 

Had this SAME EXACT problem when I first swapped from 305 to 350. My problem was a vacuum leak that kept causing it to bog out. When I was at a red light i would have 1 foot on the gas and 1 foot on the break just to keep it running, then when I would launch I would hear the carb close up and it would try to die but I would floor it and keep it alive. My vacuum problem was in my t400 transmission. This was also with a 350 edelbrock 750cfm, not sure what part number but 1406 looks familiar and I think thats a 750cfm? Manual choke?

 

All this is great info but even after warm it kept wanting to die and even was worse later in the day. The floats were out of adjustment per manual. But this is all great information. I thank you guys. I'll look into it

 

Its like a 600cfm electric choke

 

I would say vacuum leak or nasty fuel or both.

 

Yes your part# should be a 600 electric choke model.
Once you have flooding you can fuel foul your spark plugs, and they don't always get better on their own.

Yes, the icing thing can kill the engine when coming up to a stop, but if you let it sit a few minutes and heat-soak it usually starts right back up and runs okay for a while. You may have either another problem, or multiple problems now, even discounting fuel wet plugs.

The float drop will not cause flooding, but the upper (needle closed) setting can. I probably forgot to mention, but an obvious thing to check is to pull the needle out of the seat and look down into the seat for any obstruction.
Sometimes old rubber fuel lines start coming apart on the inside and bits of rubber can jam in the seat.

Besides the carburetor stuff I would go ahead and do some other general troubleshooting around the engine bay. You might find another symptom to help with your diagnosis.

 

This guy "Gets it".

It ain't carb icing, b/c First of all, that is a VERY uncommon occurance, but more importantly, it happened warm and cold.

It COULD be vacuum leaks but that would have nothing to do with fuel leaking out of the 'linkage' (Throttle shafts? Accelerator pump?)

I'd double check that your needle and seat are sealing. Then after that, I'd throw that Edelbrock carb in the garbage and get something else. (I was extremely dissapointed with the one that I had).

 

Haha I love you guys! I found 2 problems so far!

Various particles, basically dirty inside and one of the floats has gas in it!

Tomorrow I'm going to replace all the plugs, the floats, finish cleaning her up and I'll check back in

Question, I haven't done it but would it hurt to blast the idle mixture holes after removal of the screws and what what the main pcv valve connection? Haven't touched them, just wasn't sure.

 

If you mean "blast" with carb cleaner, then no it won't hurt. Try to remember exactly how many turns your mix screws are out, and never put any torque on them when they are bottomed out. Go VERY lightly when you are screwing them in to the bottomed out position.
A common starting point for the Idle mixture screws is 1.5 turns out from the bottomed out position.

You can also clean the idle circuit from the top if you have removed your primary metering block & boosters. One of the passages under each booster leads forward to the idle circuit.
It's a good idea to clean all the passages sometimes, but it's mainly the air bleeds that are most problematic because they are so tiny it doesn't take much of an obstruction to alter their function or block them.

 

Thanks for the tip bro!