where to start?

[cbrewer13]

ok, so i foolishly decided to rebuild the head and the carb at the same time. so after a month or so i got everything put back together (yesterday).
so, what happens is this;
-car barely starts... i had to crank it on and off for 10 minutes to get it to fire, and even then i had to boot the gas pedal to do it.
-so i had to keep throttle on it and the choke pulled to keep it running.

so... here's what i know i need to get into:
-i probably have a dead cylinder (any suggestions for that?)
-idle mixture and throttle stop

anyone have a btdt issue to check while i'm at it?

[So Cal Mark]

well, before you start trying to tune it you need all of the basics; compression, fuel and spark at the proper time. Start with compression. Why would you expect a dead cylinder after rebuilding the cylinder head? If it's really difficult to start I'd suggest you check the cam timing, then do a compression test

[cbrewer13]

fuel - check and check, flooded the bejezus out of it at one point
spark - don't have an assistant at the moment, but induction timing light does blink on each wire
compression - havn't tested yet. man, that would suck.

i'll get back to you with the results.

[joelbert2k]

I'm with Mark on the cam timing. That's where I'd start.

Joel

[cbrewer13]

well, you were quite right about the cam timing, crank was a tooth off. now it starts easily... kinda...
here's what's happening now...
after i got the cog timing all sorted, it started right up. it ran quite smoothly with the choke pulled. i let the car warm up and then pushed the choke in. RPM dropped down to about 1000RPM and it continued to run smoothly (pretty good for an initial eyeball carb setup... i thought.) once the idle leveled out, i set the idle speed to get it down to 800-900RPM... so far so good.
next i went back and forth between setting the distro timing and resetting the throttle stop. finally got everything where i wanted it.
after another 5 minutes of good running, RPM suddenly dropped down to about 400RPM. i gave it some gas and it resettled at about 2000RPM. i blipped the throttle again and it went back down to 300-400 RPM and began to run rough and stalled out. after that it wouldn't restart. i waited 10 minutes and after a lot of cranking it started... barely. once it was running again, it was the same deal again, only this time it was missing intermittently before it would die and not start again.

it seems to me like it's flooding while it's running, which i'm not sure is possible. it smells strongly of gas in the driver's seat while it runs.

any ideas?

[racydave]

Make sure you havnt chewed up some wires in the distributor, or at least they tend to break. Second how about a fuel sample in a glass bottle. If it has water in it it will be murky, and may separate.

[So Cal Mark]

is this carbed or FI?

[cbrewer13]

this is a carb. it's a 1592cc so it's a dhsa3 carb.

dual points on this one, all wires are intact. gaps are correct.
bad gas, you think? you may have something there. i will pull my level float out and take a sample tomorrow.
i should note that it runs fine (aside from a slight miss) when revved. could it still be bad gas?

[mdrburchette]

Are you running a mechaical fuel pump? The diaphragm may be going in it. Also, I'd check the idle jet to make sure you haven't picked up some trash.

[cbrewer13]

i just rebuilt the carb, but it's possible it sucked in something from the tank or filter.
it IS a mechanical pump. are you thinking that it starts hard until the bowl fills and then it runs well until it empties, and the pump can't keep up with it? i can check for that.

[So Cal Mark]

that wouldn't be a typical problem with a mechanical pump.

[joelbert2k]

I would suspect that it's hard to start until fuel gets into the bowl and then runs well until the bowl over fills.
Check the float and float level.

Joel

[brad131a4]

Have you checked the sensor for the dual point switch over? I eliminated one set of points on one of my spiders as it kept causing problems.

[cbrewer13]

i thought about switching to single point. is the sensor for the switch over one of the temp sensors mounted in the head?

[brad131a4]

The sensor is in the bottom of the intake manifold. I unplugged mine then figured out which points to remove.