Quote:
Originally Posted by cdowns
theres a filter sock on the fuel pickup inside the tank not unusual for that to be clogged with crap
|
I was laid off from my long-term job, back in '75, and ended up going to work for Sears Auto Center. One of the jobs I was given, was on a '72 Mercury Montego Brogham, that was loaded....429, and all the bells and whistles. It was a "come-back" job....it had been brought in for a tune up/carb overhaul. Shop manager gave it to me (don't know why me) but the only description of the reason was that it would run and die. Shop chief told me to "rebuild the carb, new points, plugs, wires, fuel filter, rotor and cap". After I got all that done, I drove it. After a couple of miles, I exited the freeway, and headed back to the shop. Within a mile of the shop, it died. It died at least four more times before I was within sight of the shop. I finally made it back, and drove it onto one of the lifts. At that point, I dropped the tank, removed the fuel pick-up and (to this day), I still have the sock that was on that pickup tube. It never came back for that problem.
But, there's a deeper problem with Sears.....that being the simple fact that they could fix anything, as long as your credit was good and you had ample room on your credit limit. I saw other issues besides that one. I seemed to be the one to get the stuff nobody else could fix, and never did I get one that hadn't been muffed up, leading the customer to spend more money than he/she should have had to spend.
Just read a Custom Classic Truck (Jan) issue that tells of taking a '95 Camaro in for plugs/wires, only to find that the six used plugs he got back were what got changed. The other two plugs in the V-8? Still there. Plug wires were routed too close to the exhaust manifold, and they didn't live 200 miles.
Vapor Lock? I have not seen such since my dad sold our '50 Plymouth, in '59. Used to see people come in the station I worked at, with clothes pins clamped onto the steel fuel line, to "prevent" vapor lock. Not gonna say it doesn't happen, I just don't have any experience with it, and I try to stay true to the routing of fuel lines, as the factory intended.
My '69 had a problem in which it would die. Being I am older and not as agile as I once was, I let someone I trusted work on it. Only thing is he wasn't doing the work, just one of his employees. After replacing the ignition module in the HEI, it seemed okay, until New Years Day, 2003 (about a month later). To make a long story short, I put in a new Accel HEI. The problem with the old HEI? The wire to the reluctor had an intermittent break in it that would become an open circuit when you let off of the gas and the vacuum advance would move it enough to break the circuit.
Don't know if you have HEI, but don't let this tidbit throw you off. I only put it in here JUST IN CASE you exhaust all the normal options and have questions. In the medical world, the problem I had is a zebra, when you should be looking for horses when you hear hoofbeats.