Lacking power
 

The car starts up and runs fine, but as soon as I get to a hill it doesn't want to go at all. Just slowly crawls up it. On the freeway I have to have it completely floored in 5th gear to keep it going 60-65, and the tachometer says it's at ~4k rpm when I'm doing this.

I'm really stupid when it comes to cars, I admit it, but here is what I've done to it so far.

Rebuilt the Carb (with help of course)
Changed the air filter, fuel filter, spark plugs, cap, and rotor
Gave it an oil change

I've been using the Haynes Repair manual to make sure I'm doing everything right. And asking people who actually have experience whenever I'm unsure of something.

I'm completely lost on what to do now, or where to look for problems. I'm not even sure if I'm just expecting too much out of this car (Although it would be nice if I could make it up Rice Hill in Oregon).

Any suggestions or a point in the right direction would be great.

Forgot to mention the engine is a 12a out of an 84.

adjust the floats?

Check the ignition timing, and make sure that you have spark on leading and trailing...

When you rebuilt the carb, did you remove the jets and clean them?

Or..... your exhaust could be clogged.


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Leave the floats alone and check the exhausts/cats for plugging.

When the carb was rebuilt it was because the secondaries weren't opening. One of the floats appeared to not be letting any gas in. That was adjusted to what the Hayne's manual said it needed to be. I don't believe that the jets were removed at all. Other then adjusting the floats, just the gaskets were changed and it seemed to fix the problem with the secondaries.

Should I take the carb apart again and have someone help adjust the floats some more as well as making sure the jets are clean?

I'll try to take the exhaust off this weekend then and check for blockage.

Floats rarely, if ever, need to be adjusted. But since you have already done that, you may have messed them up. Easiest way to check is to look in the sight glass windows and see what the fuel level is. They should both be at halfway.

A clogged jet could be causing the issue, if you have any bucking at higher steady speeds. It is possible to remove the jets without taking the carb apart again. Run a search on "jets toothpick" and you should find a thread on this.

I was able to finally check the exhaust yesterday, and that was the problem. I removed the catalytic converters, and now it runs like a completely different car (that's a good thing). :)

Now go back and check both sight windows in the carb and make sure the float levels are correct. Fwiw, toss the Haynes manual and download the FSMs from the link in my sig line. I think you need 15 piosts to see signitures, so make a worthless post, then dl the FSM, carb manual and anything else that looks interesting to read.
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