Working on cherry

[MuirR]

Cherry she's not, but my first... Old truck she is. I picked up a 77 long bed the other night. Barely drove, she spit and sputtered in gear and had trouble propelling herself down the road. I knew of this problem when I went to check it out, and had done some research. So I wasn't too worried, plus for just 500 bucks I figured why not.

Sou paid the man, and limped her home. Could do anything that night so I just wedged her into the shop and called it good. Next day I took a look at it, startin with vacuum leaks. I found the vacuum advance hose was hard and soft line stitched together. I didn't really have a good testing spray so I just guessed that was leaking at least some. So I "borrowed" the line off of my 85 Camaro as a test. Bam! It now idles in gear and drives down the road! Now the idle mixture screws don't do squat on my quadrajet so I figure there is more leak somewhere. Best guess right now is the vacuum diaphragm for the choke that is non-existent.

The p.o. said that the engine is a gm remanned unit (all blue) but I did notice that the intake says edelbrock on it. Any thoughts? Someone I would guess slapped it on and painted it to match.

It's a 350 with I believe a th350 though I have yet to actually confirm my suspicion.





Some sweet ghetto rigged buckets right there!

[cadillac_al]

Nice pair. My girlfriend had a 77 C10 and a black/silver 84 Z28 too. Looks like a good score on the truck.

[old Rusty C10]

very nice truck well worth the money

[MuirR]

So I plugged up the assumed remaining vacuum leak. It's a little hair lip but I do believe is has a good seal. However the truck doesn't seem to run any different. After a short drive and letting it run for a little I again tried to adjust the idle mixture screws. They didn't do anything, again. Could there still be a vacuum leak? I did the vacuum advance from the distributer and then capped the one from the non existent choke. The choke line was old and cracking so that's gone.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am tempted to throw the edelbrock carb from my Camaro on there and see if that sorts it out (after adjustments).

[MuirR]

Was looking over the carb some more tonight, the throttle linkage doesn't come all the way back down the the idle screw. It seems to bind up on the rocker that connects to my guess would be a metering rod? Should I maybe connect it to the lower hole in the rocker arm??

[bmchevy1979]

I would check to see if the fast idle cam isn't holding it open my 76 would sometimes not kick off because the choke linkage was gummed up it only had the little spring that controlled it so if it was really cold my choke would get stuck on

[MuirR]

I removed the remaining bits from the choke today. That does seem to have aleviated the issue with the throttle linkage not resting on the idle screw. Also the idle mixture screws do seem to actually create a difference. Only thing now is that when I went to time it this morning I found that it was timed nicely at idle (about 12) but would only go to 19 or so at 2500+ rpms. It seems like the mechanical advance (vacuum was plugged) doesn't advance it much. I currently have it advanced pretty far to try and split the difference and it runs ok. I do have a vac advance distributor for my 305 camaro that is a spare unit. Anyone know if that will work? I will probably also post this over on the engine section as well, just trying g to keep everything together as much as possible.