The car usually starts fine from cold and runs OK at first, which I'm
guessing may be from having the choke on. But after that, accelerating
from standstill is tricky--I have to feed the gas v. gently, or it runs
roughly and loses power. It also idles roughly, and it often stalls on
coming to a stop. Turning idle speed up to ~1100 rpm has helped w/the
stalling, but only somewhat. Sometimes it's easy to restart. Sometimes
it takes quite a bit of cranking, and a bit of choke seems to help,
even when warmed up. Steady running at freeway speeds is usually
OK--good thing, as I take freeways to work.
A few days ago I got off work and headed onto the freeway on-ramp,
which is ~3/4 mi from work. The car had been running OK, but as I began
heading down the ramp, it began doing the roughness-and-losing-power
bit--I could get it up to only 20 or 25 mph, and I was beginning to
wonder if I'd made a mistake in taking the freeway. After I'd been on
the freeway proper for ~100 ft, it suddenly cleared up and was fine
after that.
This past Friday I had another problem, which may have been unrelated.
I'd stopped at a shopping center on the way home from work. As I was
headed out of the parking lot after shopping, the car suddenly died. I
tried to restart, and it was totally dead--voltmeter at the bottom of
the scale, not even a click from the solenoid. I got someone to give me
a jump and made it the remaining 5 miles home OK. I went out and
started the car another 3 or so times that evening, just to see if I
could.
On Saturday I took the car out for a 10-mi freeway run to charge the
battery, and I've run quite a few errands, entailing parking and
restarting the car, over the weekend. It hasn't gone totally dead on me
again, but the other problem persists.
My mechanic Glen Edinger, who (fortunately) makes house calls, came out
and replaced the points (which were pretty bad), and timed the car, a
week ago. I replaced the condenser Fri. evening.
Other parts that have been replaced on my watch:
Alternator--rebuilt 4 months ago
I'm 90% sure distributor cap and rotor have been replaced in the last
year
Carburetors replaced 11/97 w/a rebuilt set with ~1000 mi on them
Voltage regulator--replaced ~3 yrs ago
Now, Glen is going out of town for a week, leaving me w/these
alternatives:
1) Muddle through and have him check it over when he gets back;
2) See if I can fix, or at least diagnose, it, w/some help from you
good people;
3) Take it to another mechanic--not an attractive proposition, as
getting to and from work by bus won't be easy.
Any insights? TIA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
eGroups Spotlight:
"NBA Digest" - Get all the NBA news and statistics
you can handle. http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/114