I finally took my car out for a drive. It's been a couple of years at least.
I needed fresh gas and some air in the tires, so I did that and while
driving around I noticed a lack of power. I was in third gear going up a
gentle incline at about 4000 rpms and had the gas pedal floored and wasn't
picking up any speed. I should have been right in the middle of the power
band there and been able to feel it. 2nd gear wasn't too speedy either.
This is with a '69 1600, stock, except for a smog distributor. I haven't
been able to tune the carbs properly according to my colortune though. I'm
stuck on step 1 - getting the color to turn blue. It's always yellow and no
matter how I adjust the carbs, it stays yellow. I made sure the needles are
flush with the piston, put new oil in the damper, but it doesn't seem to
matter. I've been reading about tuning the SU carbs too. If I lift a piston
about 1/2" manually the idle smooths out (it's been running rough) and the
color turns blue. The valves don't clatter, the engine sounds good under
power and revs smoothly. I've got the timing set to 16 deg BTDC (smog
setting, 0 deg is for non-smog distributor). I haven't checked the valves to
see if they're set right (I don't know how first of all), but I don't know
why it's performing so poorly.
Does anyone have any ideas?
-Mitch
'69 1600
Chelsea, MI
http://beladi.stormloader.com/
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