firestarter

I've tried everything i know and it still does it. I'm honestly stumped. To start at the beginning, I was on my way home from town on tuesday and through my cowl hood i say coolant spewing all over the back of my engine. Luckily I was only like 10ft from the house so i shut her off and coasted in the driveway. Well i take the hood off and lo and behold I have this lovely looking mess of a heater hose that looked like a hotdog in the microwave too long! Well to make matters worse I had blown the head gasket. WEll thats not bad so around midnight i'm tearing into the engine and about 5am i'm just about finished. *note to self: use more than 1 drop light during the night or it'll double the time it would take you during the day.* So when i wake up this morning I set the valves and finish all the little stuff. I start it up and it idled like a king. I sit there letting her warm up to operating temp and top off the coolant. Ok so far so good right! Wrong! As i'm sitting there listening to that deafing droning noise of open headers the choke shuts off and it goes back down to a normal idle. But i touched the go-pedal and *POP!*. It backfired on me. WEll as i'm troubleshooting i redo the timing and get it all set perfect. Check my fuel pressure its good. Check my valves. theyre good. I even Take a broomstick and listen to it and can't find out what is causing this sudden backfire. Its only a quick poping noise from the carb the second you touch the throttle. Then is ok and it pops on and off every now and then the higher up the rpms go. I can't figure for the life of me what is makeing that quick backfire! Is it spark? Looked at all the wires and plugs. They're fine and snug no burn wires. Check the distributer and everything is good. Adjust the carb every thing is good. But then i put the vacum gauge on the carb and its very eratic. bouncing between 10-17! Whats really bad is I need it for work tommorrow and its prolly something so simple. Does anyone have a clue as to what it could be or what else to check? SOrry its so long, But i'm trying to explain as best as i can. But on a more possitive side she stayed a constant 160! TIA. ~Firestarter

Vader

Pyro,

Some of that coolant spray may have wet the ignition components. Antifreeze has a nasty tendency to turn to sludge without ever completely drying up. Ispect teh distributor cap, rotor, and coil closely for any contamination.

firestarter

Thanks Vader! Now that you mention it I did notice some condensation on the underside of the cap! Guess I'll take the heat gun to it tommorrow. Its been raining all week. Thanks!

firestarter

Just goes to show you how big of an idiot i am. I replaced the cap and rotor. set the valves again. adjusted the carburator, set the timing again, etc.... Well after all this i said what the heck and did a compression test! well I managed to bust 2 valves because i initially set those valves too tight! I did all the rest fine i just screwed up on those two. I set them all the same but like an idiot they looked alittle loose. SO instead of starting the enging and setting them i went ahead and put a half turn on them! Nothing like spending a whole weekend and $60.00 to learn a lesson!