It lives!
 

After working on my '83 GSL since February, I am now driving it to work...about 18 miles round trip. When I first started, I took a running engine from my '82 rust infested GSL and popped it in expecting it to run still. Of course y'all know that can never be the case.

Here is what I ended up replacing with the results over the months between February and now:

Starting with the car going no where
1. Went through ~6 fuel filters, and two gas tanks, took a gas tank and got it cleaned...car still goes no where.

2. Replaced fuel pump with another parts car fuel pump, car still goes no where.

3. Purchase Carter fuel pump and Holley regulartor, car still goes no where and floods even after adjusting fuel pressure.

4. Swap carbs with another Nikki I have laying around, car still goes no where.

5. Swap carb again with yet another Nikki, take off rats nest ala pratch's how-to and check timing for good measure. Timing off 180 degrees. Car has now been running for one week. Today is the first day I took it to work with no one following me just in case it decides to stop running again.

It could still use a little tuning on the fuel pressure, needs some interior work, and the oil cooler on it has a slight leak around one of the outlets.

how do you check the timing?

and what were the symptoms of the car "not running" just before you adjusted the timing?

Jon

Unfortunately when I adjusted the timing back to where it was suppose to be was when I also removed the rats nest and replaced the carb one more time. I didn't test between any of those last steps in step 5.

As for timing, I rotated the main pulley to the ATDC mark, removed the cap to see where the rotor was at and found the arrow mark on it pointing 180 deg. from the L1 electrode on the cap. I removed the dizzy from the engine, turned it the full 180 and placed it back in the engine. I took off the dust cover next and rotated the dizzy as if I were adjusting timing until the point of the star was lined up with the leading ignitor electrode. Put everything back togethre and now I am at 0 degrees timing.

As for steps 1-4, while testing, there was quite a bit of flooding, had to replace spark plugs once, I also replaced the wires but not because of flooding, they needed it. Also, I would try taking it for a drive and it would either get about 200 feet from the house, sputter and die, or at one point I was able to go about 9 miles and then it started sputtering and wanting to die again and after I got back it didn't want to go anywhere again.

Now remember, this engine was working just fine in the other car, drove it from St. Louis to my place (about 80 miles) when I bought it, though the guy was surprised I made it home which should have told me something ;)

The only thing that would be any different in the new car would be the fuel system so that is what I started working on first.

Hope my rambling made sense :D