Help! I need a good mechanic!

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'66Dart

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Oct 21, 2012
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Torrance, Ca
Hey guys, been a long time since I've last been on here, and the dart has been in the garage even longer. She will start fine and idle fine, but once I start driving (after warm up) everything goes down hill. I give it gas and she starts to bog out, can't get about 20mph. Checked timing and it was ok, even moved timing both ways and it just gets worse. Oh! It's a 1966 dart 225. Single barrel carb. Nothing fancy.
Anyway, looking for a good shop in the south bay area (ca.), beach cities. Any recommendations would be great. Thanks in advance.

Mike.
 
Sounds like it's a fuel issue.
 
Fuel or a bad carb. I don't know if there are any good one barrel carbs available. The common practice is to replace the intake with one from a Super Six (two barrel) and go from there.
 
Little history. I had the carb rebuilt last year for the same reason, drove great for about 3 months till it started to do the same thing. Didn't have time/money to get it looked at again. So pretty much I want to take to a different shop and see if they find anything else.
 
Little history. I had the carb rebuilt last year for the same reason, drove great for about 3 months till it started to do the same thing. Didn't have time/money to get it looked at again. So pretty much I want to take to a different shop and see if they find anything else.

Well if they don't check the filter/s and fuel pump right off find another nother shop. :D
 
Unless you repair the SOURCE, you will be forever plagued. Pull the tank, rinse it out, have it coated, or if it's rusted, install a new one. Clean the lines, install a new pump and filter. Even then, you may have to rebuild the carburetor again, from contamination from the tank. People always start backwards on fuel issues. You start with the tank. Or you will never fix it.
 
means it runs good cold, but goes south when it's warm, is the choke coming open?
 
Well a good way to tell how much debris is in your tank is to look inside the carb bowl area.
You may have sediment in the filter but may not be obvious without cutting it open.
 
You have to realize that todays gas goes bad in 6 months. Take apart a carb, fuel lines, or tank thats been sitting for a year. It'll be full of crap. I'd work my way back. Pull the carb. Check for crap. Fuel lines/filter. Check for crap. Look in the tank (don't drop it if you don't have too). Check for crap.

I'd almost guarantee it's poor fuel/fuel supply.
 
If it's the fuel/tank, wouldn't it seems it in the filter? It looks clear.

Sometimes. Sometimes not. Here is how you can tell. Remove the filter. Get a clean paper towel and put it on the ground. Take the filter and tap the inlet side on the paper towel and see if any debris comes out. If it does, you have stuff in the tank that shouldn't be there.

Look at it this way. These things are bout 40-50 years old. Imagine in all that time the crud that can build up in the tank. That is always, always, always the FIRST thing I do when I get an old car. Inspect the tank. It costs nothing to remove and look and is very easy to do. Even if you find it clean, you will at least know that the source is clean. But my money says you will not.

All of this is relatively cheap to do. A radiator shop can handle cleaning and coating the tank. I had the one on my Mercury Bobcat done for like 75 dollars and that included spraying it on the outside with bedliner and cleaning and coating the inside with Red Coat. It will now outlast me. Even if you have to replace it, replacement tanks are only around 120 bucks. Fuel pumps are like 25, and filters are under 10. Not like you will have to take out a second mortgage. But it all starts with inspection.

That carburetor is giving trouble twice now for a REASON.
 
Well a good way to tell how much debris is in your tank is to look inside the carb bowl area.
You may have sediment in the filter but may not be obvious without cutting it open.

This ^^^^ too.
 
Just to give a different idea, back in the early 70s a friends shop had a then newer impala that had the same problem they did the carb, filter, fuel line clean and tune up and sent the car home, next day little old lady is back with same problem after checking every thing and coming up with nothing they did a valve job, sent car home, next day cars back with same problem out of desperation they replaced the 350 with new one and sent car home with granny, you guessed it next day same story.
They finally found the problem, remember this was a new car, a baffle in the muffler was lose and when it warmed up would block the tailpipe and the car wouldn't go over 25 mph
 
Just to give a different idea, back in the early 70s a friends shop had a then newer impala that had the same problem they did the carb, filter, fuel line clean and tune up and sent the car home, next day little old lady is back with same problem after checking every thing and coming up with nothing they did a valve job, sent car home, next day cars back with same problem out of desperation they replaced the 350 with new one and sent car home with granny, you guessed it next day same story.
They finally found the problem, remember this was a new car, a baffle in the muffler was lose and when it warmed up would block the tailpipe and the car wouldn't go over 25 mph

That was a very common occurrence in the 70's. For what ever reason GM decided to make their exhaust pipe double walled. The main problem was running into a water puddle when the exhaust was hot. The outer wall would cool instantly, crushing the inner pipe and blocking the exhaust. I can't tell you how many customers pipes we would cut and discover this had happened. Funny thing is, it would happen instantly, making the customer think it had something to do with water in their electrical system. I had forgotten all about that phenomenon till I read your post.
 
If you never upgraded the fuel hoses, most likely the two on the suction side of the fuel pump are collapsing and choking off the fuel. I had that on a road trip in 1991 when they started putting ethanol in regular gas. The engine would start stumbling above 55 mph or uphill. Ran fine otherwise. That was a 1969 Dart w/ 225 and Holley 1 bbl. If you have the later, they give problems even when "rebuilt", but usually at idle from clogged passages in the idle metering block that isn't rebuilt. If the earlier Carter BBS, no such issues. Only use newer "fuel injection" rated hose.

A vacuum gage on the intake manifold will quickly tell if an exhaust plugging issue. If the vacuum slowly decreases (i.e. pressure goes up) as you suddenly increase rpm that indicates back-pressure is building up in the exhaust. If your neighbors don't mind, you could unbolt the exhaust and run wide open and see if it goes above 30 mph better.

Finally, verify your coil isn't over-heating (i.e. paint melting, too hot to touch). If the ballast resistor is bypassed, it will and will start mis-firing at higher throttle.
 
Well, I see that almost everyone is going after the fuel system, and probably rightly so. But I have some other ideas. Longshots to be sure. But here's my thinking; There is enough fuel in the float bowl to make a quick run to well past 20mph, even if no more fuel entered the bowl, once you started the run.
So with that in mind, the plugged pipe is a good possibility. Except for the history, which said it ran well, after the carb job, until about late last summer or fall.A good second possibility is the fuel,except again it ran good until about last fall.
What you didn't say is that it stalls.And you didn't mention any bucking or farting, which is a sure sign of running out of fuel. And you said you couldn't get but 20 mph out of her.
But you did say it starts to bog out.And timing changes made it worse.And it's a 66 slanty, (with points Ima guessing).
So I'll throw my hat in with 318willrun, as to the choke somehow engaging. This will of course drown the engine, neatly hitting all the above bases.But it usually stalls out.
And then,of course there is always; tank venting.Or rather lack of venting.
But if it's not choke or vent, I can easily see a faulty fuel delivery issue, but this is also easily tested with a fuel delivery test, right from the fuel pump, before ripping it all out.
And yes today's oxygenated fuels do have a very short shelf-life. However, you also said it starts and idles fine.Stale fuel will not behave this way.
I have seen a similar thing happening with a distributor with so much bushing play in it, that when the vacuum advance engaged, it closed up the points.
So, a quick check of the sparkplugs will prove the choke theory, and the lack of fuel theory, and disconnecting the Vcan will neatly rule out the timing issue.

Now, here is a really longshot; If the camchain jumped just one tooth, and someone reset the timing, it might act like this too.The plugs will be clean, and disconnecting the Vcan will make no difference. Of course an entire new fuel system won't cure it either.
So, if the above quick checks come up OK, and, while it is a really long shot, I would next go with a compression test.Really low numbers could point to the chain.Of course being who I am, I would check and adjust the valvelash right away too, cuz while I'm in there I can check where split overlap is in relation to TDC-Exhaust, and if it's off by more than a few degrees, I'm gonna pull the chain cover,and have a look-see.As far as theories go, this one sucks tho, cuz the carb-job would have had no positive affect. So I would leave it to dead last.

FWIW; if you had mentioned bucking and farting, but not stalling; I would have gone straight to the power circuit in the carb.And if you had mentioned stalling as you took your foot off the gas, I would have been looking for water in the gas, sitting in the bottom of the bowl.And if it is water, it will still be there on Monday mourning...........But you didn't mention any bucking, farting, or stalling......................
 
plastic ,nylon timing gears or worn steel gear?and im not good.
 
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