Sluggish, No Power!
 

I have an Street Port 82 with some issues.

Car history, not to sure. All I know is the tags expired in september of this year and I bought it for cheap in a car lot. Suprisingly it started!!! 155k miles.

The car starts up great blah blah warms up blah blah :-P

When I take it out on the street this is what happens. I have no POWER!!! In detail as long as I keep momentum I can match a Kia Spectra in a drag :-P (Bad I know). As soon as I let off the gas I loose ALL momentum. If I let off at around 5k rpm and punch the gas again it will maintain the speed I was in.

If I am below 5k rpm I just slowly start to slow down. Of course if I am going up hill i'm screwed and going down hill I just BARELY pick up speed.

(This is in all gears)

I CAN NOT REDLINE THE CAR!!!. I get to about 6k rpm before it stops at 3/4 throttle. If I floor it at over 5.5k rpm it goes flat and I loose everything I got.

I have gotten it to about 65mph in a 35, (eek), but I don't want to risk taking it on the hwy and have to end up letting off the gas (then I'm a fucked duck flashing people from the emergency lane).

Every little think I replace brings up the power, but as i said before i'm up to par with a kia. Trust me when I first got the car a city bus fully loaded would kick my ass LOL.


I have done the following -

Ran 4 full tanks of prem. through the car.
Replaced the Fuel Filter
Replaced the Spark Plugs
Replaced the Rotor
Replaced the Destributer Cap
Replaced the Plug Wires
Ran Marvins Magic Oil through the system

I still need to replace the air filter and get a cat put on it and fix the choke cable. (It broke off somehow).

I want to know if this is just because I have no cat, am stuck in choke, or something else I am missing.

Any help would be awsome!!! :-) I'm getting tired of getting pulled over for expired tags and not speeding!! LOL (I have temp tags that you can't see at night)

-Chris

Could be:
* Choked exhaust system.
* Plugged intake.
* Dead leading or trailing ignitor.
* Bad Jetting.
* Secondaries not actuating.
* No fuel in secondary float bowl.

I know it can't be the ignitors or plug problems. I cleaned off the old plugs and ran it for about 50 mile and they all came back with some carb on them. This is when I was trying to delute the bad gas. I installed new plugs and took them out to look at them at another 50 miles and they are clean, but all look to be sparking.

I'll take a look at the other problem and see what I come up with. Thx!

-Chris

Open the air cleaner and confirm that the choke plate isn't blocking the primaries.

Have you checked your timing?

What carb, pump,& regulator are you running? Got any pics of the engine bay with fuel line shown?

Running no cat is always an improvment.

...did you do a compression test? 3 readings (rotor faces) on two rotors. Readings should be 90 or above. Readings of 80 or below and you're looking at a rebuild soon.

I think the timing is off, but I didn't want to mess with it until all other possiblities were fixied or dismissed. I have yet to do a compression test.

Running no cat should effect anything then?? Kinda confused about that. I get conflicting arguements on wither to have a cat or not.

Compression would be good to know, but if you don't have something to test with then... Oh well.

So what carb, fuel pump and regulator do you have? Stock stuff?

What is your exhaust setup exactly? Stock with cat removed?

Everything is stock minus the exhaust (muffler). Only marking on it is on the side, it says proformance. No logo or company name. Looks like it was installed by the guy who owned the car before me. I had to make some adjustments to the bumber. it was beating the hell out it at idle. (You could hear it 3 blocks away, so my uncle says LOL)

I can take it down to bothell imports down the road and see if they can take a look at it, and do a compression test, just dont' have time.

OK So I sprayed some jet/carb cleaner into the carb and that helped TONS!!! I played with an Eclipse GT for a couple blocks before I decided I didn't want a speeding ticket LOL.

It is still a little sluggish, but road worthy. I don't lose all power when I let off the gas so I can keep up with stop and go traffic tons better.

I got just a few 100rpms from redlining but couldn't quite get it there. If I pushed the throttle to much more it would loose power (sounds like I am flooding it or starving it not sure wish)

I do believe the timing is off. Could that possible be the problem??

Here's a shot in the dark. I have seen this cause a few car to loose all top end...

There is a little linkage that some time falls off when people play with those carbs. The symtoms are no topend and a cruncky gas pedal when floored. It is on the firewall side of the carb and is a threaded head with a pin through it that set on a cam.

I'll have to take a look into that. Sadly the clutch went out half way home today and I almost nailed the truck infront of me at a stoplight (eek). Thats no fun uh LOL.

Here's a Pic just in case.

Cool thx.

Still there.

All the sudden my clutch is back and better than it was when i first go the car. What the hell?? LOL

I am continuing to clean out the jets etc.. and it is getting better by the spray. I think that was about %50 of the problem. The rest is just replaceing and tuning filters etc... Need to get the oil changed thats about the last 'basic maintaince' left.