im so frustrated! cant figure it out!

the car is running like crap. still. we have tried everything. the compression is good, the spark is good, gas is good, the machine shop didnt find anything in the oil filter when they cut it open, carbs been rebuilt, trannies been rebuilt.motors rebuilt weve retuned the carb and reset the timing a million and 1 times now. but the car still hesitates, sounds like it has a really healthy miss under any kind of load, and hesitates but nothing seems to help me my dad and my granpa have gone through everything we can think of. any suggestions? advice? please and thank you

Have you done a compression check on it yet? Verified the firing order is set right? Check the vacuum advance is working? Check for vaccum leak?

Apart from this we may have to plan a visit to have a look. If you can drive it at all, but it's just slow going, you may want to consider driving it by my place this weekend? Or post an address in the PM and maybe I can find an hour or so to swing by this weekend -- though at the moment I'm running on overload trying to wrap up a couple projects of my own along with a h-u-g-e work (day job) project that is now consuming me. But will do what I can, if I can... assuming you've done all you can do first.

I had similar symptoms on my convertible after I first bought it. It started and idled fine but I couldn't get it out of the driveway. I was convinced I had a broken valve or something catastrophic. After days of searching it turned out the top of the coil (original mustard top) had a small crack in it.

compression checked out. it was all above 150 as it should be, firing order is correct. its wierd. the vaccuum line doesnt seem to be leaking. it advances correctly it does the speed limit fine, but you can hear a miss and it just isnt runing like it should be.the stalling seems to be random while the miss is consistent.for example i took my girlfriend for a cruise, it ran pretty good, parked it and it died every 5 feet when i tried to go home. so my granpa yanked the choke out and limped it home for me. it sat for a day and then ran fine with some hesitating. but we called the maching shop because it sounded kind of odd. so thats when we did the compression check crank play check and then took the filter to them to be cut open. they didnt find anything. my dad drove it to my granpas to see if the other carb made a difference,even though this one is in working order according to the guy that went through it twice, joes carbeurator to be exact. it drove and did the speed limit but you could hear/feel a miss still and it just ran sorta rough. im just at a loss. roger, this weekend looks free except for maybe saturday afternoon. if you have a little free time either one works for me, the car does the speed limit fine. just pm with what ever you wanna do. sunday would probably be the best but if not i can try and make saturday work. just let me know as soon as you can
thanks

Might be chiming in a little late here, but doe the engine run bad all the time or just when warmed up? Sounds like it did OK when you took your gal for a ride, but then after it was warm and time to go home it acted up? Just curious but kinda got vapor lock stuck in my head??:confused: Anyway if this has been addressed feel free to ignore me. Later Steve

I'm thinking vacuum advance unit on the dizzy my self.

Check the coil the though. see if you can barrow another coil and see if it makes a difference..

I installed a pertronix unit once and was in a hurry and forgot to tighten the positive wire on the coil and had similar problems.. it was really embarrasing too.. it would miss and every once in a while the wire would rattle loose and it would quit every five feet..

Nathan

coils good, we tried the old one, with he same result. and the old one was/is a working unit the only reason it was replaced was for a little hotter spark with the electronic ignition. we have a feeling that its the distributor. we are going to check tomorrow(saturday) morning and see if its not holding the timing. thanks for all the suggestions guys [thumb]

a buddy and i were messing around with his 74 opel and a friend of his had installed a msd II coil on it(40k or 80k) or something and it would pop sputter and run like crap, so we put the old stock(20k or less) coil on it and it runs like a champ, in essence it was to hot of a spark and causing preignition.

try running a colder heat range spark plug and see if that corrects the problem

What electronic ignition are you running. I would place my money on distributor and or similar accessory. If you are running an MSD set up....I can tell you exactly what the problem is!

What distributer are you running?