Me again. My '84 camaro (305 HO) is idling rather rough and hesitates/stumbles when I accelerate too hard, but the stumble only happens while the car is warming up - the rough idle happens at all times. It's got a rather well-used 600cfm Edelbrock carburetor in place of the quadrajet and I haven't touched it since purchasing the car in January. I'm guessing it's running too rich at this point - I'd take a spark plug out to check but they are in there SOLID. I just replaced the fuel filter today, as it was collapsing internally, but that doesn't seem to have helped anything.

 

If it's stumbling on hard acceleration there's actually a decent chance you've got accelerator pump issues or you're just lean. Have you followed the procedures around setting idle and your choke yet?

In terms of the plugs if they're in there so bad you can't get em out you may need a tune up first.

 

Huh. No, I haven't - like I said, haven't touched the thing. I did notice though, while changing the fuel filter, that both of the rods the throttle plates are attached to have enough play that they make a "thunk" noise when I wiggle them. I'm reasonably sure that's not fixable, unless Edelbrock makes shims for them or something. As for the plugs, I was told by the previous owner (a serial liar and awful electrician) that they were replaced 800 miles before I bought the car - who knows if the shop he paid to that actually did it, though. I didn't want to break them as I have to drive the car to work tomorrow, but I do have replacement plugs.

Edit: forgot to mention that the stumble sometimes goes away, I believe it's when I'm not going up any kind of hill or incline. And the car ran far better in January, which was much colder, so it seems strange it'd be lean now. Not ruling it out though, it certainly has loads of possible vacuum leaks.

 

Yeah, it was running lean. Only on the driver's side though, the passenger side screw was two full turns further out. Took me half an hour to find that but it's running much better now, if not perfectly.

 

Weird, sometimes it'll load up at idle and run like garbage, and other times it won't. It's definitely very finicky, though. A quarter turn on either screw in either direction and the car will barely even idle. Is this normal?