spyke

How can you tell if your fuel pump is not working correctly or going bad? Because I have a glass filter on the fuel line and today after putting spark plugs in my cutlass I noticed that the filter was full BUT it almost got empty and very little gas was squirting into the filter so I was wondering.g if the pump was going bad?

MDchanic

How's the car running?

- Eric

oldcutlass

The filter is not a good indication of a bad fuel pump. Is your tank vented, try loosening the gas cap.

spyke

The car starts and idles fine now I do have to that it does seem to be starving for gas or something because when I pull off its fine but when I get down on the gas it seems to not that get up and go like before I thought maybe it was time for new plugs which the old one were badly fouled I was told to change filter in the Carb it said that it could be bad cause blockage is that possible?

oldcutlass

So you did a tuneup, did you reset your dwell (if applicable), timing, and carb?

spyke

OK I'm not sure what the dwell is but should I adjust the timing up or down? I'm gonna also change the fuel filter inside the Carb for some reason I feel like it may be bad also, right now its like a process of illumination because I also want to say my trans filter could be clogged

oldcutlass

If you still have a points distributor, dwell is the timed gap for the points. It needs to be set to 30* prior to setting the timing.

spyke

Oooooooohhhhhh...... OK I know what your talking about no I no longer have points that distributor was removed months ago it now has a hei in it and the wire are good I just put a new ignition module in it because I have a remote starter on it and the old one went bad because of the remote starter at least that's what the guy said at autuzone but like I said it will crank on the dime without pumping the gas its just when I'm driving I try to get down on it to pass a truck its not performing the way it should

Koda

Spyke, in my experience, if you get on it, and it falls on its face, it's not the fuel pump. The carb fuel bowl has enough gas that you should get some awesome performance, then it will fall on its face and start coughing.

I have had two carburetor failures involving throttle that I will share. The secondaries were varnished on the first one, and the performance of the car was ideal until 60 mph, then it would surge, die off, surge, die off, and you could coax it faster slowly on the primaries, but no power was there. Second one was crap in the main jets circuit which made any power at all just go "blehhhhhhh" and no power from about 20 mph on.

So, is your problem behavior at: idle, off-idle (just taking off from the light slowly), primaries (20-40mph mid to serious throttle) or secondaries (passing on the highway, or all wide open throttle applications)?

MDchanic

And let's not forget that a leak on the high-tension side can also cause the same symptoms.

Common places would be coil, coil wire, cap, rotor, and wires (but a number of wires, not just one).

- Eric

Koda

Indeed, as they say 90% of carburetor problems are electrical.

spyke

I this it all throttle applications

Middian

what about hard time staying on cold but just sputtering when warm and on throttle

joe_padavano

This thread is 3 1/2 years old, so I hope he got it fixed by now...