I warmed up the car this morning as usual, just turn the key and the engine starts, no choke, no pedal. Once almost fully warmed up I started moving the car, slowly thru the alley, to get on the street. Still easy on the throtle, I get on the street at 2-2.5k rpm, make a turn, and the car stumbles and dies! I coasted to a parking spot, started the engine, had to pedal it to start it. It was running really rough, shaking, misfiring, some smoke seemed to be coming from the engine bay. I thought, 'vacuum leak?', checked all around, nothing. Last night I was testing my pressure regulator so I had the key switched to the on position for a few mins total without starting the engine, so I thought, maybe I flooded it, or lost compression from too much gas as compared to the oil from the omp, or some impurity went into the carb from torquing the **** out of the brass fittings that go into the pressure regulator. At this point the only way the car will keep running is with my foot on the pedal, or puilling the throtle cable while I'm at the engine bay. With the engine off, I looked down the barrels and there was a little puddle in the both secondaries. So I whip my carb cleaner, start and rev up the engine, spray some down the barrels, no noticeable effect. I said **** it, I'm going back home. So I turn around and drive the car back home, keeping it over 3k rpm at all times. It's still missing, like it has been doing since I put the new carb with huge fuel jetsm but it keeps going. As I get home, the car starts to idle normal. I'm like wtf? after a min, I decided to drive to work taking surface streets. In the process of so doing, I revved the **** out of the engine, taking it to 6.5k rpm in every shift, to help clear whatever might need to be cleared. The engine behaved almost normally, except it seemed to loose power faster on uphills and turns than usual. I'm a little mistified as to what happenned. I'm almost sure it had to do with last night leak tests though, I'm just not sure how.

 

You just described the exact symptoms I recently had when I lost my leading ignition coil. Barely driveable and smoke coming off the engine, even though the temp gauge read ok. Hope this helps....

 

I just replaced the leading coil with a Blaster 2 about 2 weeks ago, so I'm sure it's not that. It looks like I did flood the carb is the problem cleared itself later. Redlining it at every gear seemed to work.

 

Good news man. Happy motoring!