Re: when it rains it pours................ - Saab Sonett Bulletin Board - Saabnet.com
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Re: when it rains it pours................
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Posted by spiv (more from spiv) on Sat, 16 Jun 2001 15:20:11 Share Post by Email
In Reply to: when it rains it pours................, ChadJ, Fri, 15 Jun 2001 22:30:08
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Well, Chad, LOTS of possibilities here! You know the basics: to make the engine go, you have to have (1) gas (2) air (3) sparks and (4) compression, and they have to come together at sorta appropriate times. Since your engine seems to run OK when it runs at all, I'd guess it's got compression; problems you're getting could be any of the other three. Let's try to be organized about this:

1) Gas -- Sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn't, maybe you've got an intermittent problem with the fuel supply. Let's start with the tank. If you've just rehabbed this car after a long sleep, it wouldn't be too surprising if there were rust and crud in the tank -- happens all the time with old Saabs. You'll be driving along, everything's fine, then suddenly the fuel pickup sucks up some crud that partially clogs it -- suddenly engine doesn't want to go, feels as if you're running out of gas (which you are!) etc. After it finally quits and you go away and leave it, the suction lets go of the crud, which falls back down to the bottom of the tank, and a few hours later the car is fine... until it sucks up some more crud. Clogged fuel filter will have the same effect (and remember, in addition to whatever fuel filter you've got ahead of the carb, there's supposed to be a little screen at the fuel pump inlet, and this can get clogged too.) You might try putting in one of those clear filters just ahead of the carb so you can watch it and see if the engine is getting a constant supply of clean fuel.

Same thing could be happening in the carb on a smaller scale -- dried-up goop in the float bowl gets sucked through the carb and clogs the jets. Only long-term cure is to take the carb apart and clean it all out with solvent. Or if you've still got the doofy original FoMoCo carb, ditch it and replace it with a nice new Weber 34ICH (which has a manual choke, so it will solve your choke problem too!)

2) Air -- Well, if you know your choke is sticking, that isn't good! Air leaks also can make the car idle badly and run roughly. These can be anywhere in the rubber hoses from the carb to the distributor etc. etc., or the gaskets around the base of the carb.

3) Sparks -- Unless it's a diesel, ya gotta have sparks. Sometime after you've gotten the engine to run OK for a while, pull out the spark plugs and have a look at 'em. They should all look dry and be a nice tan color. If one looks moist and/or is black and fluffy, it isn't firing properly and you've got to find out why -- bad plug? bad cable? bad distributor cap? etc. As long as you've got the plugs out, you might as well also do a compression test (if you can buy or borrow a compression gauge) just so you can be SURE you have good compression in all cyls instead of just assuming it as I did above.

If ALL the plugs look sorta dodgy you could be dealing with a different kind of problem such as bad points or incorrect point setting, weak coil, etc. Personally I'd rather just dodge all the points issues by throwing them away and replacing them with a Pertronix Ignitor, which fits inside the distributor and uses an electronic switch to do the job of the points (no wear, no need to check point gap, etc.)

The sparks also have to come at the right time, and if the timing is off the engine won't want to run well, so snaffle a timing light somewhere and check that it's okay. Also check all the wiring that goes to the points, coil, etc. I had a lot of weird ignition problems with my car that eventually I traced to the fact that the wire that goes from the points to the coil had corroded away inside the connector boot, so there were only a couple of strands making contact; snipped 'em off, put a new connector on a clean section of the wire, problem solved.

If you get through all these without finding any bad voodoo, you can at least take comfort in the fact that you've got an EXOTIC problem rather than a dumb, ordinary one, and then you can come back and we'll all try to figure out what else it might be...


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