Schade

So my beat up 79 won't idle. shocking, i know. it takes a bit of work to start, and as long as i keep on the pedal, it'll run, but once i let go, it dies off when it get down to around 1700 rpm. the fuel liens were dirty, but i had them cleaned last weekend, which didn't seem to help that much. the mechanic told me that the floats probably need adjusting. it seemed to idle fine if i held the choke open, so i did some searching here, and tried to do adjust the floats as per this thread

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...e+needle+goes+

i couldn't get the floats that low (51 mm) without likely breaking the damn pins off, but got them down to around 40mm, and that seemed to help a little bit, but it still refuses to idle on it's own (without choke).

any advice is appreciated. thanks.

(i could probably get a video of what it does).

P.S. to be honest, i'm kind of new to fixing up a car ( should have seen the excitement when i took the carb top off and managed to put it back together working), and am wondering if i shouldn't just cut my losses and throw this to craigslist and hopefully find a working one.

mar3

iTrader: (8)

The choke plate creates a stronger vacuum signal which pulls extra fuel into the manifold for cold starts. If it's dying w/o the choke, you're lean. My guess with the limited info you've given is either crap in the carb so it needs a COMPLETE pro rebuild, think Sterling carb, or you've got a vacuum leak.

Mario III

Schade

if i had to guess it's likely the first then, i did notice a bit of brown buildup in the bowls when i took the top off, which is unfortunate, as the carb was rebuilt 2 weeks before i bought it, so i guess the dirty lines/possibly rusting tank were a bigger problem than i had thought. it's not that easy to do the rebuild then?

what other information would be helpful?

thanks for the answer btw, much appericated.

mar3

iTrader: (8)

Rebuilds are tricky because of all the little check ***** which aren't even the same size. Everything has a specific hole to go into and making sure all of the passageways are clean can be problematic. It's no harder than building a Quadrajet or Carter AFB, except for those stupid little check *****.

Me? I'm pulling the carb off the '84 this weekend and boxing it up to send off to Sterling.

Schade

out of curiosity, is it possible to have it converted to fuel injection without just getting a different motor?

Aaron Cake

iTrader: (1)

Yes, you can convert to fuel injection. It is not cheap and will require:

-high pressure fuel pump
-FPR
-throttle body to replace carb
-injector bungs added to manifold runners
-ECU to run it all
-all appropriate sensors

The easier fix is to rebuild the carb.

mar3

iTrader: (8)

...and cheaper, too...I'm going to EFI the '83 but I'm taking a different route.

-Mallory EFI fuel pump
-Mallory FPR (already have)
-Holley TBI stand alone unit with Holley 4150 baseplate adaptor (already have)
-Rotary Beat 12A intake manifold with Holley 4150 bolt pattern (already have)
-Holley Pro-Jection EFI computer (already have)

Even so, I still have to have the "header" worked over to get a bung on it for the O2 sensor and I'm having the whole thing recoated for extreme duty use. I've been gathering the components for the past year from friends moving onto new racing systems and eBay. What it's all cost, I couldn't tell you, but it's still a bit more expensive than simply getting Sterling to rebuild the Nikki carb.

Schade

well, good news; i took the carburetor out, cleaned the bowls out with carb cleaner, sprayed a bunch of it into the holes at the bottom of the bowls, there was a TON of crap in there, kept doing that until it came out clean.

it idled on it's own after some warm up (and switching the fuel filter around, i had put it in backwards). still sounds a bit weak, but hey, progress is progress. now i gotta read up on how to tune the nikki. might seafoam it too to clean out the fuel lines/tank some more.