Sickly

I switched it to electronic ignition, leaned the crap out of it and it stopped doing it. The fuel thing still seems to be happening, but so long as it runs fine (which it does) I don't mind. Now to pass DEQ.

I wasn't buying it, just scouring CL for parts and came across this and thought I would share.

it's rough, but it has good glass and a title! http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/cto/4021466561.html

That's a good idea. I will try that next time I am around an air compressor. Do you know if there is an easy way to flush the tank without removing it?

Thanks talldude! Yesterday I noticed that my little plastic fuel filter right before the fuel pump is sort of sucked in on the sides and the fuel just sort of trickles in. It seems like that should be flowing a little more freely. It would seem that there is restriction in the lines. I crawled under the car yesterday to see if I could find anywhere that the line looked damaged but found nothing. Is there some kind of diagnosis process to find where it is clogged?

A few months back I bought this car... paid way more than I should for this 78 Subaru DL wagon... 2wd. It's in sweet shape cosmetically, but I think I got hosed. I have had nothing but problems with it. So far I have had to replace the carb, fuel pump, alternator, in addition to plugs, wires, cap, rotor, new points and air filter. Now it seems to run and drive fine except that it randomly will hesitate on takeoff. I put a multimeter on the coil today to see what kind of voltage I was getting. First I put the negative probe on the negative battery terminal and poked a few spots. Hot side of the coil said it was getting ~10v. Then I touched the resistor posts. One side was getting ~13, the other ~10, so that seemed good. Then I put the positive probe on the positive battery terminal and poked the negative post on the coil and I got confused... it was showing me ~7. Then I put both probes on the posts of the coil itself and got ~3. I referred to my shop manual and saw that the ignition coil does in fact ground through the breaker points, but I am not sure how that would affect the numbers. Can someone tell me whether these numbers are normal? There is also a small silvery cylinder mounted to the coil bracket that has one wire going to the other side of the same bracket (grounding I assume) and it looks like a wire is broken off the other side. Could that be affecting my voltage readings?

It looks like it has two antennas mounted on either side of that air dam thing. The far one is easy to see, but if you look close there is a thin vertical line.

There was a substantial piece of gasket material in the secondary. I am going to spray and pray when I have some free time. In the meantime, she sits.

BTW Sub78 thank you very much for the PDF of that book. When it comes time to rebuild my carb the walkthrough in there is exactly what I am going to need. Thanks!

Okay... that makes sense. I also just this morning found a little piece of what looked to be a black, paperlike piece of gasketing inside of the second barrel of the carb, so maybe thats where I'm getting a leak. Its acting like the throttle is opening more and more. It seriously revs up and sounds like it's trying to take off like a jet. My girlfriends dad came by while working on it and he suggested that it might be a racing motor. LOL!

Wouldnt turning the mixture screw all the way in make it die?

Got the timing figured out, drove it to the gas station and put some treatment in with a full tank of premium. Ran and drove very smooth and nice. Start it today and drive it around and the idle keeps going up. Pulled into the driveway to turn the idle down, and find that neither the idle mixture screw or the idle adjustment seem to keep it from revving. This is really strange. Was the built up junk in the carburator finally loosed from the fuel only to reveal a bigger problem?

We used the #1 cylinder and it's dead on now. Is it normal to use the #4 for other engines? The bentley manual we went by was for a very broad range of years.

In trying to get my 78 wagon through DEQ we have run into some timing issues. We are trying to get TDC on the motor, then reinstall the distributor to be sure that the timing is where it should be. Following the bentley manual it says that when you turn the crank, you should feel air pressure on #4 when you pass TDC, but we are getting pressure about 1/4 rotation after we see the marks. What could be causing this? Why does the manual tell you to use cylinder #4 instead of #1 like most cars?

SO in trying to pass DEQ with a non-catalyst car I am getting really high CO readings. I am allowed 2.5 ppm, but am getting around 8 ppm out the tailpipe. My thought is that it could be A) I got the timing out of whack when I filed and gapped the points or the carb needs some help. Could the timing throw the CO levels that far off?