or get a light with a tach built in

 

yeah if you can't find one at autozone check ebay there are alot of old school ones for sale cheap on there..

 

I bought a Dwell/Tach ($40)at Advanced Autoparts and a timing light at sears($70). They had cheaper ones which didn't have all the bells and whisles. Make sure you adjust your dwell/points before messing with the timing.

Larry.

 

I used starting fluid sprayed around the carb base and manifold and heard no fluctuation in the engine. So I'm ruling out a gasket leak. BUT when the car is idling (and when throttling up) the carb has a crackly sound to it. I assume this is air and gas sputtering out of a hole or something. Is this an indication of something? The more I think about it, I bet the carb needs to be rebuilt. I bought a rebuild kit off ebay a few days ago so that will be here soon. I also bought a tach/dwell meter and will pick it up later today.

 

Hmmm..... I don't know,,, I am trying to imagine it,,, just cant quite get there.... I can get the "sucking noise" of the air going past the throttle plates.... Are you certain that all of the vacumn ports are either closed or connected....

Do you have power brakes? If so you might try disconnecting and plugging the vacumn hose that goes to the booster, it may be possible that the booster is broken and vacumn is being allowed to escape at this point. This is for diagnostics only, and of course you need to consider that driving with the booster disconnected may be hazardous.....

 

Imagine clenching your teeth with your lips open, get some saliva in your mouth and inhaling strongly (pardon the silly analogy). I just wasn't sure if the carb should make a nice clean sucking noise instead of a sucking noise with intermittent crackly sounds. I was thinking maybe the jets (or whatever delivers teh fuel into the carb) is clogged or needs replaced.

I have manual brakes. Do you happen to know how many ports there should be on a 2bbl autolite and manifold? There are holes everywhere but I just assumed those are screw holes for add-ons. I haven't found a hole with a vacuum yet.

 

That noise can be a lot of things, before I rebuilt the carb, there are a few other things I would check out that have not been mentioned yet....and I have a few questions first. Does it Idle fine then when slowly getting on the gas it will fall on its face ? If so, pull the Vacuum line of the distributor advance and then try to bring the rpm up, my 68 did that and when I disconnected the line it ran like a champ. I bought a new advance unit and installed and what a world of diff. Also a low vacuum reading can be caused by the carb not being adjusted properly, Reconnect your vacuum guage and adjust your air/idle screws until you get the highest vacuum. Before you adjust the carb, pull that line off the advance unit and then adjust. It could be as easy as the screws got knocked out of whack

 

Back to a very basic question,,,, are you running a points ignition? if so, have you set the dwell? (Dwell = points gap)

 

I have been chasing similar problems in mine. I have been able to make it better, but not perfect. Once you start adjusting your timing and your carb settings, take your time and resist the temptation to keep making adjustments. Make one, then test drive, then another, then drive again. Small adjustments and much road time

 

Ok, here's what I found today:
I used a tach to set the RPM's about 500. Then I read the dwell and it was at around 25 degrees. So then I attempted to set the gap WITHOUT a feeler guage. It was hard, but after a few attempts, the guage read 29-30 which is closer to the 29 degrees cited by Chilton's as being correct. But this also means I must set the timing again and I don't have a gun at the moment so the dizzy is back close to where it was before. I adjusted the fuel mixture while guaging the vacuum and not much changed. It wouldn't fluctuate until it was close to dying from being too lean. Then I noticed that when I'd blip the throttle with my fingers, the idle wouldn't not come back to 500 RPM's. It seems that if I adjust the idle up, I'd blip the throttle and it would return to a higher RPM and if I'd idle down again and blip it again, it would return to an even lower idle (there's prolly no relationship though)! I also noticed that I'd have my dwell set pretty good (29-30), when I take off the vacuum advance off the dizzy, the dwell would change a lot. Maybe that's normal (I know vacuum comes in first and then the mechanical advance kicks in later).

I still also notice a distinct intermittent crackle coming from the carb especially when I increase the RPM's.