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NEEDING KNOWLEDGE

2K views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  Werecow 
#1 ·
I naively purchased a 1978 Holiday Rambler with a 460. Sight unseen. I thought "oh how adorable a vintage motor home could be when restored ." The woman with the ad said it had new battery, started up fine and some other vague details. My mind immediately wondered why out of all things to mention that she made sure to list that it had a new battery. "Never had any problems with it " she said ,"except sometimes it needs a little starter fluid If it's been sitting for a period of time. Ofcourse when we went to get it it took her 3 times of the key turning before the vroom part happened. Now, if it isn't evident already..I know nothing about cars. Nothing. But I'm seriously making an effort here to understand so BEAR with me. Once driving it seemed strong but that it didn't like speed up pace or power when my foot told the pedal to do so. We had about an hour and fifteen minutes trip to make. We stopped briefly with myself in hysterics over a evil spider and when it idled for more than 60 seconds or so, it died. Got back in, fired right back up loud and appropriately rumbly I'm told. Back on the road, my boss who was following me phoned me and told me to look in my horrendously dusty side mirrors as I hit a curve in the road. Oh. My. God. My cheeks turned bright red. There was the longest line of cars behind me!!! I pulled to the side and let them go by me. Some of them flipped me off. I smiled and returned the warm gesture. Back on the road again. We're about almost an hour in and he calls me again. Demands I go faster. I'm thinking well hell my foots pretty firm down there on the pedal it's not going any faster. We pull over he checks the fluids and smells the engine. Eew. I hop back in, search my peripherals for spider villains and turn the key. It wanted to but didn't start. I think they call that turning over? I tried 5 times. He gets in it, it starts right up. I get back in , it won't start. He says I must be doing something wrong so he gets in again and again it starts. At this point I'm mortified and we switch seats. Back on the road. Before long it starts sputtering and popping noises and slowing down , despite the fact my foot has the pedal to the floor. So we're at a spot I can't pull over and the car is just vroom put put put POP vroom vroom put put put POP put put ..jerking trying to keep going. It makes a loud clearer pop than those other pop noises and starts running just fine again in a split second. I pull over because the loss of the acceleration on the narrow road (plus above mentioned) spider mafia had be a little scared. My boyfriend pretends to have automobile knowledge in fact he has a good f250 hrs working on with the same engine that has some similarities in their issues. But if he knew. He wouldn't still be tinkering with the f250. With that said,



Excuse my depiction of events . And my lack of car knowledge besides sounds and girl verbiage.



Any ideas?
 
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#4 ·
That kind of popping and bad driveability can also be due to old gaskets in the carb or intake, or bad vacuum hoses, making a vacuum leak and screwing up the fuel/air mixture.

The bad news is that no answer is wrong here. You're gonna have to check just about everything in the fuel, spark, and cooling systems to see what's wrong, and that's pretty normal for an old engine that hasn't been up to operating temperature in a long time.

Good news is that if the oil looks ok, there are no fuel leaks, and the engine has decent compression, you can fix whatever else is wrong by just bolting on some new parts (without taking the whole engine out and apart)
 
#5 ·
Agreed!! Fresh gas, plugs, check under the distributor cap for ugliness, and barring doing the cigar vacuum leak test get a vacuum gauge to help find leaks and generally help out with any other issues you may have in getting her running good.. do a goggle search on how to use one and it'll help out immensely..
 
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