donsrods
Well-known member
There is an old adage that says if you are troubleshooting a running issue you should always do the simple stuff first........I kinda forgot that tonight.
We've been busting hard on getting my Son Dans rpu ready for Billetproof in April. Last night we fired it up again and it ran great. We then built the throttle linkage and a couple of more things and tonight when we started it up it ran like crap! Popping through the headers, and fire coming out too.
We went back over all that we had changed and still no good, so we started thinking the worst. Did we wipe a cam lobe? Did we bend a pushrod? Is something going out in the distributor or coil? Etc, etc. We pulled the valve covers and the valves were all moving up and down like they should. We pulled the plugs and ran a compression test........180 across the board.
We called my Son Don and asked for some ideas, and he asked how the plugs looked. They were black, but the car runs a little rich, so nothing new there. He suggested we clean up the plugs and see what that would do, so I threw them in the blast cabinet and sandblasted them. Put them back in, and the car runs like a top!!!!!!!!!! [cl
I would have never thought that carboned up plugs could affect an engines running so much, especially since it ran great only yesterday. Needless to say, Dan and I will sleep a lot better tonight, knowing we don't have some serious problem with the motor. We already turned down the fuel pressure regulator to 4 psi tonight and tomorrow I'll pick up some new plugs too.
Hot rodding is SO much fun.
Don
We've been busting hard on getting my Son Dans rpu ready for Billetproof in April. Last night we fired it up again and it ran great. We then built the throttle linkage and a couple of more things and tonight when we started it up it ran like crap! Popping through the headers, and fire coming out too.
We went back over all that we had changed and still no good, so we started thinking the worst. Did we wipe a cam lobe? Did we bend a pushrod? Is something going out in the distributor or coil? Etc, etc. We pulled the valve covers and the valves were all moving up and down like they should. We pulled the plugs and ran a compression test........180 across the board.
We called my Son Don and asked for some ideas, and he asked how the plugs looked. They were black, but the car runs a little rich, so nothing new there. He suggested we clean up the plugs and see what that would do, so I threw them in the blast cabinet and sandblasted them. Put them back in, and the car runs like a top!!!!!!!!!! [cl
I would have never thought that carboned up plugs could affect an engines running so much, especially since it ran great only yesterday. Needless to say, Dan and I will sleep a lot better tonight, knowing we don't have some serious problem with the motor. We already turned down the fuel pressure regulator to 4 psi tonight and tomorrow I'll pick up some new plugs too.
Hot rodding is SO much fun.
Don