hard life ends up to hard starting

[Tercel__jon]

ESo i think the little 3a is about to the end of its rope. Last month is when it started getting hard to start. It would chug and refuse to rev over 500rpm and wouldnt stay running unless i had my foot to the floor. Eventually she would climb over 1500 and when she hit 2k shed wake up with a big cloud of exhaust. I thought the carb was going bad. Well, that was confirmed when i took the carb off after deciding to try the weber that i have. Sure enough, pool of gas in the intake. Well after the day of tuning the weber and getting everything happy (minus the vac lines for the dizzy, plugged the port on the carb too) it ran fine. Today i tried starting her up and it was the same issue! Chug chug chug refuse to idle. Etc. Also shes very noisy. I assume its piston slap because i only here it when its cold. I know what the valves sound like and this aint them. Compression when warm was 145 145 127 138 this was after i went for a drive with throttle open. Didnt do a wet test. I also haveeen loosing a bit of coolant so the headgasket may be leaking.

What do yall think? Time for the 4a?

[dlb]

those compression #s aren't too bad. 127 is close enough to being within 10% of the others that i wouldn't worry about it. but if it's consuming coolant, i would look around to confirm it's not leaking it externally. if you can confirm that, then you've definitely got a marginal HG. at this point i would normally say just do the HG but if you've got piston slap going on too, then yeah, i'd say screw it and go for the 4a.

what colour was the big exhaust cloud on starting that you mentioned?

[Petros]

head gasket seepage could make it act like that. once warmed up it will run fine, when cold the "wet" cyclinder is making it difficult to start, and it does not always show up in the compression test until it is really bad.

pull the spark plugs (usually head gaskets fail first in #1 or #2 cyl.) and inspect the piston tops with a flash light. If one of them is clean, likely it is getting "steam cleaned" by the leaky coolant. Slimy residue in the radiator or coolant recovery tank is another indicator of a leaky head gasket.

The 4a would be a good swap, but a complete rebuild and engine swap is a lot more work than just replacing a head gasket ($20 in parts and about 3-4 hours). if you do the head gasket make sure you follow my head gasket procedure I have outlined over in the "repair guilds" section.

Good luck.

[Tercel__jon]

Alright, so check this out. Shes stopped consuming coolant for the moment. Drove her to the gas station to top off the tank in case of snow and shes fine. HOWEVER, Think I found my hard start problem. I loosened the dizzy and rotated as far to the firewall as possible and she starts so much easier! Dont have my timing light on me, Ill look for it tonight though. So, I know there is vac advance and how it works, but there are two hoses on the tercels. I know one is the advance and I believe, if I read the other thread right, it was retard? For Idle? Is that how it works?

What Im asking, is with the weber, How do I utilize both diaphrams...or is that not possible? Just run em to a T and then the carb? Or run one to the manifold and the other to the carb? Ive read all these options...

And get this....the piston slap went away when I changed the oil. Weird huh...

[Petros]

retarding the spark makes it easier to start, but running on too much retarded spark could overheat the valves and cause severe damage to the valves or the engine.

You might want to replace the distributor cap unless you know it is not too old, and check the timing. Set it to 10 deg BTDC, not the factory 5 deg.

[dlb]

no, neither diaphragm on the advance unit retards the timing. the lower one advances timing by 13* at cruising, and the upper one advances it by 8* at idle and cruising.

and yes, you can and should ideally utilize both diaphragms with the weber. i actually just added this to the FAQ last week, along with some pics. hopefully it's clear enough, i know the descriptions can get a little confusing.

here's the FAQ, scroll on down to #13.

https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7442

[Tercel__jon]

So, I pulled the distributor and advanced it a whole tooth. I have all my power back! Pain in the butt to start today though (no problems at all last night). Ill have to fine tune it obviously. I advanced it on a complete whim. In a parking lot. In the middle of the snow. Runs so well though.

Weber is still running richer than snot though, I think going down a size on the jets will help.

Edit: on second thought, Ill hook up everything like you have it DLB and go from there. (#13) I was wondering what that thing was thats on the cylinder 1 intake runner. AND I just found like 3ft of vac line in the garage today too. Awesome.