The Cal-look Lounge

40mm venturi
160 Main
F2 tube
185 air
60F10 x 110 idle
Float tab .955” below carb body lip
Needle valve 2.00 (25mm from carb top)
3.0psi checked w/ two different pressure gauges
New intake gaskets @ carbs/heads
New plugs
New wires
Tried 2 different coils (one Bosch high KV and one MSD)
Valve lash @ .005 cold
30 degrees advance

What would cause the tune to all of the sudden go very very rich? I mean REALLY rich. On AFR I’m seeing low 9.00’s in transition from idle to main. Before the “problem” I was seeing 12.5-12.8-13.00 @ same rpm and car ran flawlessly. I can usually nail this stuff down, but obviously I'm missing something. Any ideas? Ready to push the car off a cliff and collect stamps instead.

 No settings have changed.

leaking or dripping needle and seat?   have you looked down the throat when running? 

looked @ idle and butterflies are dry. Forgot to mention, tried my spare needle valves too. It idles ok. It is when you put a load on it and bring rpm up around 2000-2500 then it bucks and gargles and pukes black smoke. Steady state cruise @ 3000 is awful. 
I used to be able to soft shoe it around, shifting @ 2700 or so, which is how I would drive it until oil temp came up, just to be nice to it.
Now it sucks, but nothing changed.

I had "A" car (read: not vw) do that to me once,  heavy load it would seem fine, Idle... nothing special but when driving at a constant speed it would buck.  I tracked it down to bad spark plug wires. 

I'm going to strip all down to the bone again this week and see if I can find it. I had a Bosch 215 rotor cut one cylinder out, I thought it was a vacuum leak until my friend said "try a new cap and rotor" and bingo.
thanks Taylor,
Jim

Have you pulled the plugs to inspect and compare all?
It does sound as if you're losing a cylinder ... When did it start, before or after you replaced plugs & wires?
I assume you've checked that jet stacks are tight ... it's got to be ignition ... what's your setup?
TxT

Have you tried putting a timing light on it & making sure of the advance? I agree w/ everybody else re: checking the ignition. For some reason our immediate instinct is to go for the carbs. & usually it is the ignition.  Hope you get it sorted out.  Bill

Although these are the Weber specs, they are an indirect measure of the float height.  As you know, it's the fuel level that counts.  The confirmation I use is to take a short piece of coat hanger wire and stick it down the vent hole between the jets until it touches the floats.  Compare side-to-side.  When you have the carbs apart, check for fuel inside the floats.

When I was daily driving my 48s, I had something similar happen.  Over about 2 weeks it got really rough running, obviously rich.  Eventually I tracked it down to corrosion in the idle jet wells.  The bottom where the idle jets seat against the aluminum was badly corroded so that fuel was bypassing the jets.
If you're taking them off and apart, have a look down all the jet wells.  Look for a contact ring.  You could even paint the taper of all your jets with a Sharpie, then screw them in and take them out to look for a continuous ring.

I would double check timing and make sure wires are hooked correctly to plugs and cap. I had a similar issue once when I did not tighten a main jet stack completely. The car would idle fine, but as soon the carbs transitioned it ran terrible. Good luck.

FUEL QUALITY ??  You wouldn't be the first person to get load of Diesel mixed with your gas. Other than that if the problem
effects all four cyls. perhaps it's a fuel pressure issue.  If its gas contaminated with Diesel, just drain/purge and refill with gas.

yeah Sunday morning before I came down to Orange I was out back checking advance @ 3K, enough to get death look from old lady down the way.

thanks again everybody

Hey Jim, don't give up, with all the knowledge you have, you'll get it. Besides, stamp collecting is boring.... But here is a one, check the squirters, maybe loose? Pumping more gas in? The check valve at the bottom of float bowl?

Ted

yeah I've had idle jet stack back out while driving, which felt like IDF plugged idle jet, but this is different feel... like idle circuit to main circuit is getting no air. It hits on all four, then slogs down and gargles and nosedives, you can clear it out, unlike a lean condition.
Ignition is MSD 6A box, MSD distributor (old- from 1995), locked advance set @ 30 BTDC, Bosch-Mercedes W123 coil or MSD coil, new wires, X5DC plugs

Hey Ted thanks.

I had carbs off and stripped down twice last week and went through it all, with no luck. I always double check the squirters and "aim" them anytime I'm in there. Good call though, same of check valve in bowl.

what's interesting is I was talking to a friend Sunday about it and it was like he had ESP, as he mention he noticed a drastic change in way his car is running lately too. Fuel companies just can't leave things alone? Not only is it $4.45 gallon now but runs like piss too? Who knows.

This gross rich/misfire condition, is it on one cyl., one bank  or all four?. Circumstances prior to noticing the problem ? and
the last thing you fixed (service history)  ;D

Permanent solution: get rid of those old, pesky carbs and install EFi.

hi Phil,
judging by plugs, it's a;; 4 affected the same (plugs look all the same) so it's hard to isolate one hole. I know, hard to blame carbs if it isn't one throat causing it all. History is, mid March drive car up to Goleta and back ran tip top, few days later it got warbly. Figured it was time for plugs/check intake gakets/vlave adjust. Did all that like I usually do and no improvement. Oh oil change too.

Do you have a mag you can throw on it? I'm inclined to think ignition like the rest – getting to hate (sorry, 'mistrust') MSD...

No mag to try. I do have the usual 009/Bosch coil. If it makes any difference subbing it in for MSD at least I know it's spark related.

Jim, i'm just talking. The last thing you changed was the fuel-pressure regulator. (Diaphragm?).

Figment.

No that has been on car since 2008, since then the motor was gone through, and I think I've ruled it out (regulator) becuase I can turn it up and watch the fuel bleed over, checked psi with 2 gauges.

My Dad has a mag you could throw on there.    But try that 009 first  how old is the MSD box? and where is it located?

Any progress yet?  If I read you right it's not spitting back thru the carbs or shooting ducks out the exhaust? You changed the plug wires....
including the coil wire?  We're assuming at this point that whatever has malfunctioned has effected both banks. Therefore the failed part/system
is shared by all four cyl's.,ie  valve timing, fuel etc., ignition,  exhaust? (don't laugh mufflers do fail).  By the way we learned the hard way in the
early days of Lambda Sond, not to rely/lean too heavily on the O2 sensor as a diagnostic tool. I think interpretation is the key here.     

Again assuming all the 19th. century parts are functioning, a process of verify/elimination should narrow your possibilities.


On a personal note Jim, I applaud you for reaching out, even the best techs get stumped. The smart one's ask their peers for advice.
The cool part of asking is even if the responses are way wrong, they stimulate your/our brain(s) to as to why they aren't correct.   ;)

Agreed.. also usually find that when I'm stumped it's usually something simple that I overlooked.  ;)

To quote once more Dave Kawell's great advice to me when I apologised for asking him a "dumb question"

There's no such thing as a dumb question, only dumb people who don't ask questions.

Best advice I ever had. :)

This sounds familiar ...

http://cal-look.no/lounge/index.php/topic,5983.0.html

There you go! A mag solves everything! :D

hi KBPhil, thanks for the note it's appreciated and thanks for checking in. No, no breakthroughs yet, but I did gather some more interesting evidence.

a) all 4 plugs look the same (on the fat side of normal, like a briquet just beginning to turn grey)
b) one carb base gasket (cyl # 2) was saturated in fuel (other 3 were dry)
c) carb top-to-body gasket on #1 & 2 carbs was "wet" (they're normally dry when I pull carbs down)

That's as far as I have gotten. Weeknights are tough for finding free time. Dug out an old 009 and wires that work with it, maybe this weekend I can test it and put this all back together.

009 with 6A box in, better but curve difference needs jetting now  ::)

I have to say- I found another 800 rpm up top :o (time for springs?)
Forgot how good the good ol 009 runs.

more later

thanks to all

You obviously don't read the Samba forums.  ::)

JR,
Did you ever check running voltage to MSD? Coul di t be a battery on the way out limiting system voltage???
TxT

If its german it will be fine :)

Back in biz.

needed 120 idle air holder and 34 deg total. And better brakes  :o

I'm really happy with 009. MSD distributor is getting shelved.

All fixed? Cool!  Can you explain what the MSD dist. was doing/or not doing?  I think there's a lesson to be learned
from your experience.

Go for 4 wheel disc, they're AWESOME. I used AirKewld Bad, but it was a mistake to upgrade to 4 piston calipers in front ... Too much brake & not enough tire, no matter what I run.

Wonder how it'd perform with an 010 ... ?

Glad you got it straightened out.
TxT

X2

It was doing what MSD does.  Mysterious Spark Disappearance.

IMO people buy that MSD crap because everyone else has it.  What problem do you have that you need solved with the MSD?

"Parts left out cost nothing and cause no service problems."

I´m changing all my cars to magnetos that I have bought from industrial engines. I take them with me to San Fransisco on my yearly trips and leave them at Joe Hunt in Sacramento. In the end after rebuild to 009 curve they cost less than a MSD system and needs no service. If they trusted magnetos in airplanes during WW2 I would think they are pretty reliable. I did notice on my racecar that it seemed like the power was erratic and it would stop reving at different rpm,s when racing. I also noticed in two of the racecars that I built the motors to when they drove a couple of times without charging the battery the ignition would go haywire. My opinion of the MSD is that it is to sensative to have in a racecar and we have noticed a decline in power on the dyno when going from the 009 to MSD. Of course this is not statisticly proven but it made it easy for me to decide to get rid of the MSD. Sorry for barging in on your thread but maybe this will give you some ideas.

Locked advance is 1 reason it stayed in my car for 15 years it was in there. Car typically ran trouble free aside from heat soak/hot start issues in summer, so I never gave it a second thought. Carbs would need periodical adjustments and cleaning/lubricating @ accelerator roller/cam. Not until this latest run in with crap driveability and hearing guys here did I ever suspect the distributor. So what it looks like is boot @ harness deteriorated and allowed moisture into distributor and corroded triggers and pickup (car gets driven in rain and parked outside @ work in rain)

It is interesting to see that a change of distributor necessitated a different idle air. It almost seems like the MSD was capable of burning the richer fuel mixture at idle?? or something like that. Although the ignition box is what creates the spark?

I have a Mallory Unilite and I noticed my engine did not like the light springs that most people run. Advance was occuring at idle, so it might have had something to do with initial advance setting. I went to a heavier spring and the difference in operation was obvious.
*Oh, I think you were referring to valve springs; extra 800 rpm.

The same could be said of a number of Cal Look staples like over-thought fuel delivery systems and exhaust size.  Sometimes it's small and simple that works best.

I've said that to the wife before  :D

 ::) ;D

:) exactly why I keep threatening to build a 90.5 x 76, Engle 140, VW heads, big comprende, 48's...and (I guess) a 009.

engle 140...loved that cam...1985... 1835 with 140 in it....48s....ran like a raped ape