DarrenTRS

iTrader: (1)

Vehicle: '84 GSL-SE
Mods: MSD 6A, Deleted Trailing [soon to hooked back up], Dellorto 48, BUR7EQ Plugs [L], BUR9EQ [T], ~40,000 miles on rebuild according to previous owner, I've only put maybe 5,000 on it since I got it last summer.

Symptoms:
Running Leaner than usual [using a narrowband but still a noticable difference, running right around 14 AFR, I also cannot get on the throttle or it will start to lean out, if I eassseeeee into it in say 2nd gear, I can get on it, but in any other gear it will start to creep towards lean.
Hoses get hard after about 2 days of use. [due to pressure]
Air Pocket in the top of the radiator after 2 days of use. [I believe the air pocket is causing the pressure increase]
Smallish of smoke on hot start up after the car sits for 15 or so minutes.

Recent Events:
My transmission crossmember mount broke back just after school got out in April so the car sat around for a few months and was started up once a week and driven around the block for about 15 minutes then parked [looking back this was a bad idea]
No Trailing, possibly causing lean problem?
Before the car was fixed I also noticed that my trailing ignition had alot of build up in the pot of the dizzy rotor so after doing some reading I decided to go ahead and unhook it all as with the MSD I assumed it would run fine [also looking back realized this was a bad idea]
Running Warmer
Last week I took the car out for a drive and noticed the car was running a tad bit warmer than usual but I also bought this car at the end of summer and so I'm not quite sure what the summer hotness had it running at last year. [about a 1/4" above the 2nd dash, usually runs right above the 2nd dash].
My RB intake manifold also usually runs as far as I can remember anywhere between ice cold and pretty-cool even when the engine is hot, now if you let it idle up to temp it stays ice cold but after driving it around for a while it becomes pretty warm.
Leaning out
Same time last week I was driving home from taking the car out for a spin when I got into 2nd gear, began to give it a bit of throttle and it just pegged out lean, I quickly pushed the clutch in, pulled into the nearest business and let it idle for a minute, everything seemed fine, and I managed to get home, this hasn't happened again to this extreme but even after I replaced the fuel filter, and checked my float levels it still begins to lean out under throttle unless it's in first or second and eassed very slowly into throttle.
No visible leak
I've been hunting up and down in the engine bay looking for an obvious leak that seemed to illude me and I've replaced my upper radiator hose but never got around to the lower so I replaced that today, got all new coolant and went ahead and flushed everything out.
Champagne Test Fail
As I was refilling the system I was burping it and nothing but normal big bubbles came out as I would expect. Continued to let the car get warm and once it seemed to finally get all burped and the car was nice and hot [about 1/3 of the way up the gauge, hotter than it normally runs]. I noticed a steady stream of tiny bubbles that continued as revved increased and decreased.\
The Vehicle to my knowledge and under my ownership has never been overheated, it has gotten pretty hot a few times almost half way up the gauge but never passed and was promptly cooled off.

Final Question:
My Question is, I've read about the champagne test, this seems to be an indication of a bad coolant seal, are there ANY OTHER failures that you can think of that could cause such an issue? And would a blown coolant seal that DOESN'T smoke could be causing a leaning out issue? I would suspect not but it may be because the stock coils + msd on the leading alone cannot keep up with the engine.

This vehicle is my current DD and I'm a full time college student so I'm looking for some advice on what direction I need to look towards as far as having to take some time off to get a job and start working towards a rebuild or FC swap if I need to. I've spent probably the last 2-3 weeks continually trying to think and eliminate possibilities and searching the hell out of the forum but have come up on a dead end until now, so I've posted my chronicles in hopes of getting some guidance.

DarrenTRS

iTrader: (1)

Just a quick add-on after seeing pictures of someones "champagne test" the bubbles are about like 1/8th" size bubbles, and it's not a foamy type bubbles either, the second they hit the surface they pop.

Could a bad waterpump cause something like this? I've heard the term Cavitation thrown around and someone else mentioned a bad waterpump could be causing any air in the system to be compressed into bubbles.

t_g_farrell

iTrader: (1)

What fuel pump are you running? Sounds like part of the problem is a fuel
delivery issue. If its a stock pump it can't ever feed a Dell adequately under
full throttle for more than 5 to 10 seconds. If its an aftermarket pump then it
may be having issues. I would do a flow and volume test at the carb
just to see hom much the pump flows in say like a minute. It should be
almost 1 gallon per minute @2.5 psi for the Dell.

The lean issue could be causing the engine to run hotter and that could in
turn cause other issues to develop due to the higher pressures. Is the
radiator cap rated for the right pressure so it can blow off coolant when it
gets too much pressure?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i agree, fuel issue is likely to turn out to be the fuel filter being clogged. the pressure and volume tests are very easy.

hook the trailing back up

the coolant thing, the quick way is a pressure test. most mechanics have a pressure test kit. the cooling system should hold pressure basically indefinitely. the nice thing about this test is that if there is a leak, when you put pressure on, its easy to find.

i would also change the thermostat

DarrenTRS

iTrader: (1)

tg, fuel filter is brand new, I changed it about 2 days after this problem began occuring but I'm still a little confused as to how even on idle the car appears to be running leaner than usual with a full bowl and adequate fuel. and even under barely partial throttle if you ease into it in anything but 2nd gear it leans out, but if you ease into it in 2nd gear you can go all the way through the gear at WOT and not lean out. That's why I've seemed to dismiss fuel delivery [up into the carb, I'm gonna pull the jets later] as the issue as it doesn't just happen under WOT, it's ALL the time at any throttle except for 1st and 2nd.

Fuel pump is stock but I have been meaning to get a Carter one, and I've never once had this problem before aside from me incorrectly setting my float levels but I'll go ahead and do a volume test to see what I can get.

j9fd3s, I'll look into the pressure test.

The thermostat is also under a year old, but I'll look into replacing that as well, gotta have my car running better by tomorrow so hopefully I can find something at least to do with the fuel problem so I don't have to worry so much.

I appreciate all the help gentlemen, just really need some outside perspective here, even if it is hearing some of the same conclusions I've come to then overlooked.

DarrenTRS

iTrader: (1)

Update:
'
Got the trailing hooked up but I have some questions and caused a problem.
On the negative side of the coil, you have 2 wires, yellow/green is the tach signal of course, and then there is a large grey wire with a silver weave in it and then inside that is a tiny tiny black wire....the previous owner seemed to have cut some of the wires before because this wire was grey up until about 4 inches before the negative terminal then it sheds it outter skin and becomes a little black one before it goes into the terminal.
Is this the ground for the coil? and if so,
why is it layered as such?
And do I need to make sure that this silver layer goes anywhere?
I had assumed because it was running fine before I took it off and it was like that I simply connected the small black wires back where I had cut them before when I deleted my trailing ignition but after driving only about a 1/4 of a mile the trailing signal cut out and the coil was hot as fawk. Not sure if I just need to cut the silver and black and mate them to a larger gauge wire so it can use the ENTIRE cable as a ground or what the deal is...

I'd also like to add that when I was wrapping the wire up in a bit of electrical tape just to drive it around for a second, the silver weave in the grey outside sparked a tiny tiny bit....I must be missing some valuable point because I've NEVER seen it do that before.

Whisper

Shielded wires are layered. Main wire runs inside, then there's metal weaved shielding sleeve and gray outer wrap. IRC the shielding sleeve is supposed to be grounded somehwere (probably why it sparked), and I'm sure it is, but it doesn't need to run all the way to the terminal, so maybe nothing was cut and it's all stock, just needs to be wrapped. The reason some wires are shielded is to prevent them from picking up signal from other wires they may touch inside the loom, but as soon as they're exposed on their own, they don't really need the shielding.

DarrenTRS

iTrader: (1)

Sounds good, I went ahead and did exactly that, wrapped it all up just like I remember it and voila, all works, the narrowband still says I'm running right on the cusp of 14:1 [the first light inside the stoich section] but doesn't faze NEARLY as much as it did before when you begin to lean on the throttle in an upper gear, I managed to get wide open through most of third, a bit of break up at the end and then a giant stutter as I shifted into 4th [maybe 1/4 throttle] but I can attribute that to the fuel pump not being adequate enough. I also doubt what the narrowband is saying is true [the actual AFR not the way it moves under throttle] because it's progressively began to read leaner and leaner the longer I've owned the car [I think I was 2 dashes into the green when I bought it now it runs 1 dash into the yellow] so it's probably on the verge of dying all together.

And before it gets mentioned not to rely on the narrowband, it's saved my hide a few times now so it's a good indication of whats going on even though it's a really really rough indication.

Next on my parts to buy list aka birthday wishlist:
FC Coils
New o2 Sensor or possibly money towards a wideband
Water Temp Gauge