IML: Hard Starting

["Eric" <gearhead@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark,
 If your car has over 100k miles on it, often the nylon coated cam gear has 
worn enough to cause starting difficulty. All the vacuum hoses are suspect 
if they have been in the engine compartment for a few years. There is a 
insulator that sits between the carb and intake manifold that will develop 
cracks and prevent vacuum to build. I had to take that insulator off to 
actually see where the cracks were. The TQ plastic bowls are also known to 
warp a little.
 You could present these ideas to your mechanic if you keep him. The lower 
octane gas that we get nowadays will actually light off easier, higher 
octane is harder to spark and burn, but as for the oxygenated gas I'm not 
sure how it affects ignitability. Before I replaced my worn out cam gear, I 
had the seemingly unrelated trouble of long crank times, multiple pumps when 
cold, and the carb not coming off of high idle unless I jabbed the throttle 
completely to the floor, now I just need to tip into the gas a tiny amount. 
This is with a Carter carb on a '72 440. Its a good idea to poke around and 
see if you can find the small things, like cracked vacuum hoses. If you 
watch the timing mark w/a timing light and the mark jumps around instead of 
holding steady, then you should prepare for a timing chain repair procedure.

Eric
Portland, Oregon
______________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 19:50:55 -0500
From: mark blitman <markblitman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: IML: starting procedure
Reply-To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
my mechanic told me that starting my '74 Imperial on the first turn cold
would require several quick pumps of the gas pedal; he says the
re-formulated gas combined with the design of the TQ bowl makes this
necessary..so far on 6 straight cold mornings he is right..I am also
sensing the fast idle being set where before with a single pump(as per
the visor instructions) the fast idle never set..has this happened to
anyone else?  thanks!   sorry if I am being redundant; this has probably
been covered before...
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