Hesitation while accelerating...TURTCEL

[TURTCEL]

So I changed my dizzy advance, my EGR valve, and carb. I had to take it to the shop for fine tuning this morning. Just called back by shop and the mechanic said he can get it to idle great but that there is hesitation upon light acceleration. He said that once it gets past the hesitation point it is fine.

All vacuum lines are correct and no vacuum leaks were found.

His thoughts are that there may be some type of ignition issue...any thoughts from anyone on this? Could I have done something wrong while doing the dizzy job? Could the advance weight springs be stretched out? He said it seems to be a s snappy prob that goes away only after the hesitation point while driving.

It did not have these issues until I swapped in the new parts.

The timing is set at 10 degrees BTC from the mechanic so that is where Tercers have recommended it be.


I just want my car back and running well. What's the deal?

Peace

[Petros]

it is possible you have a weak spark at low speed, but not likely. It would be very rare that a weak spark causes hesitation. Usually hesitation off of idle means it is too lean, if you are certain there are no vac leaks (including in all the vac operated stuff), try adjusting the idle mixture (this is normally sealed with a plug on factory carbs, but the rebuilt should have the plug removed.

You can get around this by adjusting the idle up to about 1000 rpms. It will not harm a thing and will stop the annioying hesitation until you can isolate the problem.

[TURTCEL]

One thing I forgot to mention was that once while setting the timing I had a jumper wire connected to the tach plug and it grounded out on the strut mount bolt causing the car to instantly die. It started right back up and didn't seem like it harmed anything. Could this be causing some issue?

Also when the shop called me this afternoon to tell me how the car was running they said that they thought it could be weak spark so he was going to look into it. When he double checked the timing he said it was 5 degrees retarded...I had it set at the 5 degree mark on the timing tab...that is correct right? He reset the timing to 10 degrees and was able to set the carb easily. Could my dizzy have some issue with it? Could the advance weight spring be weak? Also he said he adjusted the carb and had it running great at idle but that it had that hesitation still under acceleration.

Could driving the car with it being retarded 5 degrees for about 6 miles causes these kinds of probs? I set the carb after thinking it was at 5 degrees when he says it was not. Not exactly sure what is the deal. My friend who is also very car saavy confirmed the timing to be correct when we installed the dizzy. It drove super great for the first 2 miles then what went wrong beats me.

I really thought the choke was stuck but turns out that the choke was not the issue.

Plugged catalytic converter possibly?

Peace

[Petros]

None of those things would cause a hesitation, not likely grounding out the coil would harm anything. You may not have the idle slow enough when you set the timing, no harm would come from running it a few miles retarded (long term in hot weather, yes: but not in six miles).

If it ran good and than went bad, something changed to cause it. catalytic converter would not cause that either, it would be affected more at higher throttle settings (lack of power), not at idle/low speed.

Only too causes are it is too leak at low speed/idle (vac leak, gasket leak, internal carb issue/adjustment), or weak spark at idle (less common).

good luck.

[TURTCEL]

Another concern was the amount of play in the shat itself. I noticed that there was slight up and down play and a a little more side to side play. The mechanic had a concern with this and asked if I had availability to another dizzy so he could do some ohm tests and see the difference in shaft play.

I know this is not recommended by you guys due to inconsistant results but suprisingly the local parts store actually had an A1-Cardone Reman dizzy in stock. The mechanic said that if it tests the same then I could just return the new dizzy. No prob with me on that. 290.00 including core is way more than the $50 advance and a little of my time. But when the ride is torn down in the shop it needs to get fixed.

I inspected the reman dizzy and there is absolutely no play in the shaft at all. The vacuum advance tested good too. Makes me question why the timing is relocating itself all the time. I hope this takes care of the problem. I will be keeping my core and looking for shaft bearings or I'll give it to my friend that works at a super bad ass machine shop and see what they can do with it. I don't want to be without spare parts so the dizzy stays with me. Also, with a lifetime warranty I will give the reman a shot if necessary.

I just want to drive the ol' girl.

On the upside the car is pretty much new now.

Peace

[Petros]

good luck with the reman. i have seen about half of them junk right out of the box. May be you will get lucky. If your shaft as play in it, it must be fixed or replacd. it will cause unreliable spark timing and will cause it to act irregular at low speed. could be your problem.

[tercel4wdrules]

I have two reman distributors and they work fine, but I have seen reman ones that have failed as well. Did you check to make sure the mechanical advance is working properly? Plug the vac advance and rev the engine gradually and you will see the timing mark move (although I can't remember where it sits at 3000 rpm). If it's bad it will just sit at whatever you set the static timing at (which will cause a lot of hesitation and drive miserable), or in another case I had, it wouldn't drop below 10*, even with the distributor fully retarded. I always think it's a good idea to have a spare, I learned this after I had a distributor shaft failure wherein the gear part along with the shaft broke right off. Without a spare I wasn't going to go anywhere.

[TURTCEL]

turns out that the new EGR valve that bought off of Amazon and installed was faulty. During light acceleration there would be enough vacuum going to the EGR valve that it would cause it to open, forming a vacuum leak that made the car hesitate under these conditions.

The fix, I put a small metal bb in the vacuum hose that goes to the EGR diaphram to keep it from opening. The hesitation went away and all seems to be well now. I plan on returning the EGR valve and looking for another new one to replace it with. Unfortunately this is one of the downsides to aftermarket parts in the fact that they are never quite as good as factory on certain things.

Thanks for all the advice with this issue I was having. I can be very frustrating sometimes when trying to track down an issue like this especially when you don't "expect" new parts to be bad.

Peace

[Petros]

It can be very frustrating sometimes when trying to track down an issue like this especially when you don't "expect" new parts to be bad.

I have come to expect anything, especially with unknown manufacturer. I stopped buy remanufactured anything, too many rejects right out of the box. About 50 percent of the reman CV axles are junk-in-the-box. Many of the low cost thermostats are junk-in-the-box, so I buy quality ones at about $15-20, not that much more than the junk ones and well worth saving having to do the job twice, or having it go bad after only a few months.

I no longer automaticlly assume a new part is good, it goes in and if there is trouble, I check everything, including the new part.

[TURTCEL]

I am understanding now why saving a dollar means costing time and more money. I will try to only buy quality parts from now on but I was just really hoping to score on the EGR deal.

***A side note...the reman dizzy I installed do to a worn shaft on mine turned out to work just fine and will hopefully for a long time. Lifetime warranty on the unit just in case.***

With the EGR valve not functioning can I expect to see a substantial drop in fuel mileage or performance with the car? I assume it will only have minimal affect overall.

Peace

[Petros]

you should not see any difference in drivablity if it is disabled properly. It will improve your fuel economy and peak power output slightly to have it disabled. As far as I am concerned, the EGR does nothing good for the engine, it is supposed to reduce NOx formation by lowering peak combustion temps and pressure (hence the loss in efficiency), it reduces it as a percentage, but I am not convinced that it reduces total emissions per mile (politics dictated this emission system, not sound science).

I shop for low cost parts too, and many times buy cheap stuff on E-bay too, but it can sometimes be a gamble.

[TURTCEL]

I would have no problem disabling the EGR system and removing all the components to help clean up the engine compartment but I have a concern that the car will start pinging.

I have not had a working EGR valve since I bought the car because until today it was totally clogged up. I have not had any pinging whatsoever but could it start pinging if I remove and plug everything? Would I just slightly retard the timing if I did have some pinging correct?

If I do remove the EGR system can I plug off all the ports and any sensors or switches that are part of the system or do they work with other systems too? I am mainly talking about the M port on the TSVS and the gas filter, I am sure that the rest of the ports that go to the modulator and the EGR valve can all just be capped off. I would like to put a block off plate where the EGR valve goes and I would like to plug off the air tube bolt hole on the front of the engine with the proper sized bolt. Has anyone gone as far as taking everything out like that or mainly just plugged off components and run it that way? I like a clean engine compartment.

Peace