Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
As soon as we got back home we made the necessary distributor adjustments and swapped out the battery & spark plugs.
Now, my memory tends to really suck sometimes. When we pulled out the old plugs I checked to see where we had the gaps set. - They were at .055". I don't know why. I don't remember playing around with the gaps and we've always gapped our plugs at .045 when running an MSD box. At any rate, we set the fresh ones at the .045 spec before installing them.
The car popped off and ran within the first few cranks. It idled on it's own without having to feather the throttle. I was probably grinning like an idiot but things were finally starting to look like they were going our way. Spencer noticed that the fuel gauge was showing close to empty. I cleared out the driveway so we drive the Roadrunner to a gas station for some fuel. It's the first time in 6 months that this turd has seen the light of day. To be on the safe side, I followed him in the Sebring.
The car sounded pretty good but still didn't seem to be properly tuned. The nearest gas station was about a half mile away. He babied the car all the way there.
We had made the decision to keep the car running rather than shut it off while refueling. We didn't want to take the chance that we might not be able to restart it. It sounded good but Spencer told me it had little throttle response. Although concerned, I knew we hadn't fully programmed the ECU yet. As he pulled away from the pumps the car died. I cringed and waited for it to fire back up.
2. 3. 4 attempts. It didn't want to start. We did the obligatory walk of shame as we pushed the Roadrunner away from the gas pumps so we wouldn't block other cars. Damn! It's bad enough when we fail at home. I hate it when we look like schmucks out in public. I was wearing my ROADKILL tee-shirt so it probably seemed appropriate.