QuadraBog - No - Patience is a virtue

[jeffahart]

Thought I would post a problem I just encountered to illustrate a few things.

Symptoms: Vehicle bogs out on acceleration on secondaries. But only with the air cleaner ON.

Hmmm. I had recently installed a hyroboost and took out the vacuum boost, keep that in mind.

So, there I am scratching my head. Made a few phone calls that night and got the usual toss the Qjet, plus some: up the advance, check the coil, don't get rid of the qjet... and so on.

So, I test the coil and spark: I got heat and fire. No problems there, checked the plugs, looked good. Reset the timing by feel. My engine purrrrs like a top.

I checked the connections for loose and just could not get anything foul in the garage. I was really looking at that carb wishing I had another one on the bench so I could test it.

Made no sense, runs like a top, and awesome WOT with air cleaner OFF.

Now, had I posted this issue, I'm sure with ignition being ruled out, that we would be divided... Toss the Qjet.. keep the Qjet and tune it.

But since I'm a Qjet lover, I was hard pressed to blame my beloved Qjet. Plus I never had such a bizzare behavior. I started looking at my beloved skip white $19.95 distributor. Bit It also kept bugging me that I unhooked a major player in vacuum consumption and then I get this problem. I don't like a coincidence, something doesn't work right after I changed something. Always looking at the last thing I did.

After thinking about it I took action.

I grabbed a 3/8" piece of doweling from my doweling stock and started the engine. I started spanking the plug wires, distributor and coil wires to simulate road vibration.

Then I saw it, a slight spark. At first I kind of ignored it, thought it was glare. But then I got it again, and good. The power wire to the coil. Ha! The power wire got poorly routed and got rubbed raw in a small spot by the throttle linkage. You know how it is, so small is the worn area you can hardly see it.

So what was happening was the Air cleaner was pushing the wire close to the linkage. When the linkage got close the the wire, right about where the secondaries would kick in, bang short and power cut at the critical point that exactly mimicked a serious bog hesitation.... let off the throttle and power up. Almost like the secondaries were opening too soon.

A rookie type mistake of not paying attention to where wires are routed, by just being in a hurry or careless.

So.. what if I had not seen that spark. I could have put on a new carb and maybe even a new shiny air cleaner that did not push the wire into the same position, and I would have thought I solved the problem by ditching my beloved QJet.

But since I know a bit about carbs the symptoms really did not add up. So I kept at it.

Patience is a virtue when it comes to chasing problems. Whether you love or hate what you have, be it the carb or distributor or whatever, you need to give it a chance. Knee jerk blame is easy.

I love my Qjet, but I was blaming it for the issue and almost pulled it for rebuild and tune.