Gramma's Car: the new project!

[earntaz]

Ya' wanna' bet that little pooch supervised tranny maintenance at one time or another? LOL

[njsteve]

For the past week or so I have been chasing this annoying bog when I try to floor the pedal off idle. I tried different timing, plugs, secondary spring tension adjustments, swapped out with different carbs several times, even checked on torque converter stall... yada, yada, yada. Still it bogged.

I have querying all the Jedi Masters about possible solutions and I found it today. Cliff Ruggles mentioned in an email that he had seen this sort of thing happen in aftermarket air cleaners when the lid was too close to the top of the carburetor. All this time I had been thinking it can't be that simple...well it was.

I have a reproduction ram air filter unit and the lid was so close to the base that it was restricting the air flow at full throttle. Today I was adjusting the timing and I tried the car without the air filter and no bog appeared. So I thought: "Great, it was timing afterall!"

So I put the air filter unit back on and attached the lid - the bog appeared full force. So that confirmed it: It was the lid and the short filter!

So I installed an old, taller element from a shaker unit - (it makes the lid stick up a 1/4 inch above sealing with the base), and tried it. No bog!

So let that be a lesson to you all. Sometimes it's the stupid little stuff that will drive you crazy.

THANK YOU CLIFF RUGGLES!

Here is the old filter and the new one. Only a 3/8" difference made all the difference.

[njsteve]

Here's the before video with the bog:



and the after, without the bog:

[VintageMusclecar]

[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/biggthumpup.gif[/img]

Sometimes the simplest things trip us up! Glad you finally found the culprit.

[njsteve]

Thanks Eric. I knew it wasn't your carb. It had to be something ridiculous which is par for the course any time I am working on a new project. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

Maybe I can blame it on the boy. He tightened the wingnut when we first installed the air cleaner. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/hmmm.gif[/img]

[Jonesy]

Wow, big difference.

[njsteve]

You're tellin' me! I almost wound up in the neighbor's front yard when it shifted into second with the tires still spinning. And those are 275/40x17s. Time to work on better brakes.

[Xplantdad]

Neat info Steve!

[njsteve]

BTW, all this launching and bouncing around - my fuel tank sender just pooped out and is reading 3 o'clock. If I disconnect the electrical connection and ground the wire in the trunk, the gauge works again. I guess that means it's the sender...Oh, and they don't make them for 1975 Firebirds. Only 1976 and newer or 74 and older. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[njsteve]

The 74-74 Camaro/Firebird sender is made of unobtanium (no one reproduces the correct version as they have a different dual line routing than the 76 to 81 units. You can make a 76-81 work with some creating cutting nad reflaring.

One of the guys at PY thread indicated the &quot;3 o'clock&quot; fault is a common problem and has to do with the internal ground strap for the sender, the metal strap that grounds the meter float assembly inside the tank. It was kind of funny because the solutions all referred back to my &quot;derusting&quot; thread and another use for the liquid deruster. The only problem is that you have to remove the sender to soak it. Oh, well, another day another challenge...