2 replies to this topic

[1500S]

First of all, apoligies in advance if any of these questions have been answered elsewhere before, I'm pretty new here (this is my first post), but I've tried to search for answers to my questions, and have thus far come up empty-handed. So here goes...

When accelerating, if I open it up to 4 or 5 grand before shifting, by the time I get up to about 45, the car begins to hesitate/surge and won't accelerate any further regardless of what gear I'm in (but the problem is worse in higher gears). But if I slowly and gently coax it up to speed, shifting at 2500-3000 and never pushing the throttle down more than half, I can get it up to 80 without much of any problems. Running without an air filter almost completely eliminates this problem (almost), but while the filter definately looks used, it doesn't look like it's outright clogged or otherwise bad yet. Could this be some type of carb problem? I don't know virtually anything about carbs, could there be some screw or other type of adjustment I could try messing with? Or could the problem perhaps be somewhere in the vacuum morass of emissions junk? I know the EGR valve opens up under acceleration, among other things...

Second, my carb choke just started setting itself at random times a couple days ago. Needless to say, my car accelerating of it's own will gives it a certain amount of personality, but isn't exactally what I would call a safety-enhancing feature (not to mention that first time it happened, it was in first gear and buried the needle on the tach before I could even think to turn it off). What governs when the choke engages/disengages, and why would it start doing this all of a sudden? I bent the little arm that the choke locks, so it's sort of fixed, but of course my choke doesn't work at all now (when starting it in the morning I hold the throttle down slightly for a couple minutes). A side question, could having redlined my engine severely damaged it in any ways that I wouldn't be able to detect yet, or does the fact that it still runs normally mean that I got lucky and no damage was done?

Lastly, as I mentioned before, I know practically nothing about carbs. Are there any resources online, or could someone breifly describe the process of tuning my carb properly? I can't really describe it, but from driving the car, I just get the impression that something's a bit off with the carb. Something with pictures telling me where the various screws and adjustments are, and how to determine what setting they should be at would be very helpful.

I know most of these things I should take the car to a professional mechanic for, but honestly I can't afford it right now, and am more interested in learning these things for myself anyways. Wow, this turned in to a long post. In any case, thanks in advance for any help anyone might be able to provide me!

[DarkHand]

Take a look at the carburetor section of the factory service manual here. Lots of good info.

Air filters are only a few bucks, might as well change it out to see if that's the problem.

Are you sure the random accelleration is from the choke? The accellerator pedal/cable likes to stick sometimes too on our cars.

And welcome!

[1500S]

That factory service manual is exactally what I was looking for, thanks!

And yeah, I'm reasonably sure it's the choke. When it happens, I have to pull over and pop it loose with a really long screwdriver.

Looking at the factory service manual, I can see that the automatic choke is controlled by electric heater circuits (if I'm reading it properly). Could it be an electrical problem? This car has a ton of those (radiator fan doesn't work automatically, running and dash lights don't always come on, sometimes car will fail to idle if the heater fan is turned off, heater fan doesn't come on until number 2 setting, etc...). Also, what would be the 'right' way to disable the choke completely until I can get the problem properly fixed?