New member from Portland, OR - '86 Tercel Wagon DLX

[Petros]

when a mechnic tells you to get a new car, he is saying he does not want to work on it. Likely the car is older than he is and never worked much on carbs, they are a mystry most "youngster" mechanice. You either need to learn to work on it yourself (highly recommented and not so diffcult as most might think, just messy), or find an older mechanic that has not retired yet, than has carb experiance and knows what to do with them.

Modern fuel injection just requires the "mechanic" to plug in a diagnostic device to tell him what to replace, on older cars you actually have to know how they work to be able to diagnosis it. And there is the problem, most modern mechanics really do not under stand how the fuel systems operate, and know almost nothing about the carburetor system on our cars.

As always, my advice is to diagnose the problem FIRST, and than fix it.

[GotToyota?]

Yeah, it was supposed to be a reputable shop. It was an older gentleman that told me this, but I'm weary of any mechanic that tells me I should get rid of my car.

I'm 24 years old and have been working on cars since I was 14. I recently got rid of my Datsun 620 which was my first carb vehicle. I learned quite a bit, before that I knew nothing about them.

I think I'm going to get a rebuild kit, print out the carb layout and work on it myself. I have a friend with a garage and large work bench to lay out all the components.

[Petros]

cover your work area with clean white paper and lay out the parts as you remove them (you can draw circles on the paper and number them for each group of parts). be careful of the tiny parts in the carb, pay attention to where they go, tiny clips, BB sized check balls, tiny o-rings, etc. easy to loose as you take it apart. Once you know about them, where they go, not a big deal, but easy to loose and not know if you do not know there are there. Rebuilding a carb is not that big a deal, it can be done in about an hour, including removing it from the car. than you will spend some time doing the adjustments; just follow the service manual instructions.

[GotToyota?]

Awesome. I haven't looked yet but is there an area in the service manual and carb rebuilding? A step by step in there would do wonders for me.

[dlb]

yes, rebuilding the carb is covered in the FSM. starts on FU-4, or page 154.

[GotToyota?]

I love this place.

Thanks guys!

[GotToyota?]

Do you guys think it would be better to buy a rebuild kit or a used carb?

Rebuild kit is around $40-50 and a used carb can be had for $110-$125.

[irowiki]

Generally a used carb might need to be rebuilt anyway, unless already rebuilt?

[GotToyota?]

Question about adjusting timing.

The FSM says that you connect a tachometer before adjusting timing and rotating the crankshaft clockwise to TDC.

Is that necessary or can I just disconnect the diaphragm hose and adjust with the timing light? Or are the two prior steps required?

[marlinh]

Disconnect and plug the vacuum hoses and check timing. Sometimes the mark is hard to see and you may need to highlight it with a paint pen or something similar. So only then would you need to rotate the engine to TDC. The tach they are referring to probably attaches to the spare plug by the distributor.

[Petros]

I always just use the tach on the dash, which is not perhaps as accurate a quality remote tach, but it has been good enough. you just want the idle speed low enough so the distributor mechanical advance is not engages.

No reason to rotate the engine to TDC before you set the timing, I do not know what they were telling you to do, other than to verify the timing mark. That would be necessary if you removed the distributor and had to get the rotor alinged to point at the no. 1 spark plug terminal.

Rockauto.com has carb rebuild kits for about $30. Occasionally they have closeout sales, the last Tercel carb kit I bought at Rockauto was only $7 on closeout sale. I would rebuild rather than spend that much on a used and unknown carb. Picknpull regularly has half off and 30 percent off sales, that would be the time to get a used carb. At about $16 it is cheaper than a kit.

[GotToyota?]

Sounds good.

Gonna see about getting a timing light.

[irowiki]

He has a DLX, so no dash tach!

[GotToyota?]

Yep, that's correct!

[GotToyota?]

Got a timing light and checked it according to the FSM. It was way advanced, kicked it down to 10* with the diaphragm hose off and then it went back up to 15* or so with the hose plugged back in.

Leaving the battery terminal off for a bit so it can reset, gonna drive it in a few mins to see if it's improved at all.