hey, ive been working on the 7 for about a year now (1981 gsl)and i need some help. this may get lengthy, but please bare with me. i bought the car around a year ago only cause i found it for 50 bucks and it ran. it had sat out in a field for three year at a garage for problems(the same problems im having know). the symptoms where that it would not idle, seemed to lose power at the top of the shift points, and cut off very regularly. i change the fuel filter many times, and discovered that that was not the problem.you guys told me to check the fuel site glasses and they were slap full, so i decided to rebuild the carb, and in good time. on the last day of school before christmas break it would not crank up because gas got into the oil and gas fouled the spark plugs. so with the help of my dad(meaning my dad did most of the work) we rebuilt the carb, changed the oil and the spark plugs. after rebuilding the carb we got the fuel levels right at half-way, but it still will not idle at all. i have to use the choke to crank it up and if it gets much below 2000 rpm it dies. i check for vacuum leaks and couldnt find any(a full-proof method of checking would be greatly appreciated, i used a butane torch to see if the rpm's jumped from the gas). the carb only has the air mixture screw, and the throttle adjustment screw if it makes a difference. if you need more info please ask, i really want to get this thing running so that i can drive it. thanks in advance for any help.

 

Get an aftermarket carb. Throw money at problems and they go away.



Failing that. Take everything apart and re-check your carb rebuild and all your gasket surfaces. The best way to deal with vacume leaks is to make shure there is no possible way they can happen when you are puting everything togeather.


Good luck.

 

Try adjusting the air mixture screw. Give it couple of turns counter clockwise and see if that helps.

 

lol this title made me laugh..........my car did the same thing it was my carb there was a leak coming from the accelerator pump was bad and woudlint let the car idle check and see if yours is leaking....unless you put a new 1 on when you rebuilt it

 

have you checked the flow/power of your fuel pump? its possible that your pump is getting old, and not putting out enough.

edit my carb had a leak at the plastic thing under the carb....might wanna check there, and you may need to make a gaske for it, i had to.

 

It does sound like you have a vacum leak or possibly a bad rotor? Have you checked the compression and compared the two? If the compression seems "ok" then I would start with plugging the vac hoses one at a time to see if you can find suspect hose/smog componet? You can also get a can of carb cleaner & spray it around base of carb to check for leaks. And what was recomended in a previous post, since you rebuilt the carb, you may need to open up the mixture, turn it counterclockwise about 1-2 turns to see if that makes a difference.

 

flooding out? are the jets in?

 

Also check to make sure that the carb spacer was put back in correctly. You want to be able to see the numbers (numbers facing up). This caused one of my parts cars to act pretty weird. You should also check compression to make sure nothing serious has happened to the motor. Make sure of this before dropping much more money into it.

 

Hey riding with your mom isnt bad. I did it for most of my high school life. Mainly because I owned a 7, but you know what! Everyone knew me, they knew I was almost the only kid you bought and paid for my own car. So tell them haters how much you paid for that sweet ride. Then see what they say!

Riding with your mom is cool !

 

You'll grow (or graduate) out of your problem soon and then be like lots of other people and be hitching rides to work with your mom.

 

Look at the plus side...you are saving gas money.

 

thanks for the tech (and emotional) support. i just got home from school and this has been my first chance to read them. we had allready planned to check the carb spacer that was the next item on our agenda. we've been able to pretty much rule out a vacuum leak, and tried turning the air mixture screw. when we turned it it smoke like crazy and when we turned it off i back fired and sounded like a shotgun going off leaving a bunch of black crap all over the floor. the accelerator pump and fuel pump both seem to be funtioning fine. our next step is to look at the carb spacer and change a gasket on the carb. thanks for all the help, and ill report back asap. please keep it coming

 

we think we may have spotted at least a, but hopefully the problem. when we put on the carb there was allready a gasket on the carb with no holes, and in the rebuild kit there was one with holes. we took the carb back off and took the old gasket off, and the spacer had the holes in it that lined up with the new gasket. could this cause these problems, mayber a vacuum leak. we are going to check again for vacuum leaks after we take off the old gasket. thanks for your help and please dont stop, i really need a car.

 

Don't feel bad, my Mom took me to College. It was a small price to pay when one puts themselves through school. I met some of the most interesting people on the bus on the way home.

Life is full of all sorts of learning experiences, humility is one many forget. Good luck with the carb.

 

do you still have your rats nest installed? If you do then remove it. It will make tracking vacuum leaks much easier.

 

what exactly is the rats nest, and what all can i eliminate. we got it to idle by plugging a hose we dont know what does. if you look into the engine from the drivers side its the first hose on the left, and hooked on one end to the white solenoid thing(ya know it has all the blue, gray and orange things). in a manual i have it says its the air-con solenoid valve. will this cause any problems, and why does it work. not driving to school with mom tommorow!!

 

check the first gen FAQ page, there is a step by step tutorial on how to remove the rat's nest.
yes those cute colored things are what you ending up removing.
I'm too lazy to check it right now but depending on what you need (emissions, cruise control, etc.) you may keep one or two of them.
while you're in there you may want to remove the OMP and run premix if that's your thing.
some swear by it, others wouldn't dare.
again you can find some info on premix in the FAQ page and by searching.

Good luck from one fellow teenage FB hopeful to another.

 

thanks, is there any reason i should be worried about pluging that hose, beings that it goes to other things? thanks you guys

 

It probably has a crack in a hose somewhere on the other side of that solenoid, which is why blocking it off makes it run right. If you remove the rats nest you'll be doing the same thing anyway, so no it won't hurt anything

 

will removing the rats nest improve performance?

 

nope. Just less stuff to leak. Also makes things look tidier under there.

Most of the free stuff like that won't net you any performance gain.

 

Have you verified that you have spark on the leading (lower) spark plugs? If that looks good, then check the timing if possible. Also, any chance that you got the jets switched around during the rebuild? Right now my guess is going to be an ignition problem since it was doing the same thing before and after the carb rebuild.