After much time, effort and many busted knuckles & probably gallons of sweat and even some tears - Lord Vader is back and no longer immobile. First and foremost, I need to send a very grateful THANK YOU to fellow MASShole Paul Massicotte. Without him taking time away from his busy life and family, this resurrection would NOT have even been remotely possible. He tirelessly helped with both the tear down and the reconstruction - for lack of a better word. His willingness to help and the knowledge he passed along will never be forgotten. He's a solid guy and I'm lucky to call him a friend. As some of you may have previously read, I was having some serious timing and carburetor issues with my recent purchase. I bought a low mile car that the longest owner (of 35 years) put about 10K miles on during that span and I was lucky enough to "inherit" the gremlins that lied dormant for all of those years. To be expected. I really wanted the Q-Jet to work and Paul fine tuned (and timed it) a few weeks ago. The caveat was the timing didn't "stick" and it was determined that the timing chain and gears (that thankfully were aftermarket) were no bueno. Fast forward to today - after compression tests, spark tests and a whole host of other processes of elimination - the car just will NOT run right with the Q-Jet. It had a skip, was laboring and just sounded like overall crap. A quick change to the Holley that came on the car - that is in need of a rebuild - and VOILA! Lord Vader lives and breathes again! Just like that the skip goes away, there's good throttle response and it idles as it should. Needless to say, I'm stoked. That was a long 6 weeks. I learned a lot during that time and am looking forward to the fun summer I'd banked on when I bought this car in March.
Thanks! Something is just not right with it. It makes the car sound like it's not firing on all cylinders. I tried everything and my friend, who's been a mechanic essentially his whole life was at a loss. Funny, I was at the adjoining parts store buying more stuff and he was (unknowingly to me) on the phone with a guy who owns a very reputable local speed shop, picking his brain. He gets off the phone and says, "Do you still have that Holley?" Thankfully, it was in the trunk of my daily driver that currently looks like a parts store.
Seriously! Haha Trust me when I say I really wanted it to work. If you heard the difference and how it sounded, you'd totally get it.
What Q-jet were you trying to use? Just because it came with the car doesn't mean it is even remotely right for the engine. They still sell "remanufactured" Q-jets that are an abomination most of the time. They build them from piles of parts some of which may be incompatible, creating all kinds of problems. Q-jets were all individually calibrated (not just rods and jets) for the engine they were intended for. Some think Q-jets are all the same, and that you can just bolt on a Q-jet that came on a 1982 Chevrolet 305, onto a cammed big block, and they expect it to run OK. It won't. When a Q-jet is right, they are awesome carburetors. You have to have them built for the engine you intend to use them on. Fortunately, we have 2 guys here on V8 that can do that for you. OK, so after researching this, I see this is one of carmantx's carburetors. I would send it back to him so he can look at it.
Yep what Larry said. I've built a few and if it is built for and correctly tuned for the car it will run just about as well as fuel injection. There is nothing wrong with carburation just the miss-information people believe. Mikey
It's a "Level 2" build that was built for my exact application. I may send it back to Mark and see if he can figure out what's wrong with it but going forward, I'll stick with what works.
I wonder if the power piston may have been sticking in it's bore. This can play havoc with idle and part throttle operation on a q-jet. I had one 7041540 carb that had this problem, and diagnosis took forever. On the advice of a friend, I removed the .73 jets, replaced them with .67 jets, and removed the piston and primary rods completely. Dropped a check ball into the piston well to seal what would have otherwise been an internal vacuum leak, and it worked absolutely fine. All misses and surges disappeared. Ran terribly rich at idle though, so couldn't keep it on long, but at least I knew what the issue was.
It's brand new and was built for my application. As far as I'm concerned, it should be pretty much plug and play. The whole sound of the car just wasn't right and after beating my head against the wall, the swap made sense.
Absolutely nothing to do with cars is plug and play, it all takes tweaking Is your fuel system clean? Holley's are more tolerant to debris than a qjet As much as the car has sat, there is possibly an issue within the tank and or line, I'll be the first to say I'll take a Holley DP over a Qjet anyday of the week , I just wouldn't base your Qjet experience soley off this one
This was the filter from the Q-Jet. I wanted this to work but it just wasn't in the cards. I agree with your plug and play mention and made as many adjustments as humanly possible. It just was not right.
Outside of the filter will always be clean, you have to cut it apart to inspect it, fuel enters thru the hole in the bottom and weeps thru the media into the carb, that's why that spring is in there to keep the filter up against the inlet, 1 decent size piece of trash can make one run atrocious, gets sucked over a jet, or lodged in the seat. You would be surprised what I've seen in fuel bowls in carbs with filters in place. It's up and going and your happy that's all that matters, send the carb back to Mark and I'm willing to bet the culprit will be identified.
You mean having a ridiculously rare car that is the Queen of the prom wherever I go that I couldn't drive? Or do you mean a series of setbacks? I don't know which is worse! Haha
