fantomrush
+1y
I am having a couple of problems... They have been going on for a few weeks, but I thought maybe the truck doesn't like the cold. It hasn't been cold this week and its still doing the same things.
First off a little background. The truck has 88k original miles on it and a rebuilt motor with about 6500 miles on it. It sat in a climate controlled storage unit for 6 years after the motor was rebuilt. I bought it and have been working on it ever since. I did a tune up with plugs, wires, cap, rotor button, PVC valve, and an accel coil. I also rebuilt the carb because of a hesitation problem. That fixed that problem and I used the factory service manual to readjust everything (I posted in the write up section). It starts and runs good. I'm getting about 25-28 mpg and it passed emissions with flying colors. I have done nothing else to the motor or drive train other than changing the fluids and running a can of seafoam after it sat for so long. 1/4 can of seafoam in with the oil and the rest in the gas tank.
Now on to the problems... When I start it for the first time in the morning or after work it shakes and vibrates a little. After it warms up it seems to go away. Not sure what it could be or how to diagnose it.
Second, This has only happened once so far, but it wouldn't idle in traffic on my way home from work the other day. It was fine one minute (idle set about 800 to 900 rpms), wouldn't idle the next. It dropped to 400-500 rpms, didn't stall on me, but I caught it before it would, and kept it reved up. I didn't want to let it stall while I was in traffic cause I wasn't sure what was going on and if it would start back up again. I planned to let it go once I got out of traffic into a parking lot to see if it would stall or what it would do. Unfortunatly when I got out of traffic the problem fixed itself and it was idleing normally again.
The first 2 problems might be related in some way, but I have no idea. When I set up the carb I used a dwellmeter and a vacuum guage. I got the dwellmeter to bounce back and forth between 45 and 55 degrees. That puts my idle adjustment screw about 1 to 3/4 turn out from being lightly seated. It seems 1 1/4 turns out is what they are set at from the factory. I have adjusted this many times and it doesn't seem to fix anything. It seems like it is really rich on start up. I get no smoke, but I can smell fuel while in my garage. I thought maybe my air/fuel selonid might be going out, but it seems to be working according to the dwellmeter. Maybe the choke needs to be adjusted? Maybe I will hook up the dwellmeter and drive around to see what its doing when I start having the problems. Dunno...
Third problem, not engine related (I don't think), but did't want to start another thread for it. This happened this morning for the first time. I went to stop for a stop sign and the brake pedal was really stiff and didn't seem to apply any pressure to stop the truck. It engaged a little to slow me down, but for as hard as I pushed on the pedal it should of stopped on a dime. Almost as soon as I noticed the problem it seemed to fix itself. It went from really stiff to normal. It felt like the pedal was stuck one second and popped loose and worked normally the next. Master cylinder maybe? Again not sure how to diagnose this since its only happened once.
I'm just having some small minor problems like these that are making the truck difficult to drive. It has been great so far with no major problems, so I can't complain too much. Im starting to think a motor swap to fuel injection and turbo might be better than sorting out all these little problems.