Firstfives.org

Greetings All,
I sold my white car to a friend. It was a project that I was never going to have time to finish, so I'm glad it went to a good home. He's in college and very motivated to get it back on the road. He's been working on it non-stop for the last two weeks.

The car is now at the point where it starts and runs, but something definitely isn't quite right. We haven't done the ignition timing yet, but the car will start and idle, which is a little rough.

The real issue is revving the engine, it's definitely missing on multiple cylinders. The engine will not spin-up...

Some things he and I have talked about:

- Old gas, been in the tank for 4+ years, put some in a bottle, it's way cloudy, going to get that out of the car first.

- Valve adjustment - he set them @0.010" potentially there are a few that are tight. Worth re-checking.

- It's been a long time since I took the bad motor out and it's possible something wasn't done quite right with the ignition wiring when we put it back together...

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.
Thanks!
Chris

I don't recall exactly what your car is/was but we'll go from here. If it's a 530, by all means replace the points and condenser. If it's either a '28 or a '30, recheck firing order and at least take a peek at the cap and rotor, replacing if suspicous. I've also heard of injectors rusting or seizing after extended time sitting. Could be spark plug cables too, but they will usually get better as it warms up.

Thanks Mike, sorry for not providing more detail, it's an '81, so L-Jet.

Fortunately it turned out the be the gas !!!!

He should be taking a test drive today!!

So the car was running great for a few days. Now it has a no start issue.

'81 L-Jet, manual trans

The car cranks, fires then dies. It will do this over and over.

Basically the start cycle works, but something is wrong in the run cycle. It definitely has spark, I confirmed with a tester and you can hear the fuel pump come on.

We swapped in another known working air flow meter, with no change, same results.

Thoughts? Ideas?
Thanks
Chris

Carefully check the connector to the AFM. The pins in the grey connector can become unseated and will not fully engage/contact the male pins in the AFM. I had this exact symptom and that was the problem. Find my post(s) discussing this.

So this is my car now and its stuck at school. So with the key on I do get some voltage to the pins at the afm connector. If I push on the afm door the combo relay does not click. I ordered a new combo relay to rule that out. This all happened between the time I was in class. No intermittent no starts before this. The car ran fine before this. Any ideas what the voltage should be at the afm and also what the voltage should be when the relay closes.

So the combo relay was damaged due to the plastic mounting tab breaking allowing it to bounce around in the engine bay ultimately preventing the voltage that traveled through the afm back into the combo relay. So the car runs again.