Working all the little gremlins out of my '71 Cutlass, the next thing I need to address will be the hesitation I experience when going to full throttle. Pressing the accelerator quickly from idle to the mat (or close to it) seems to choke out the carb (engine dies) unless I get the RPMs up higher and kind of feather the gas to full. Then it's not problem.

The car has been in storage for about a decade; I haven't given the engine a thorough going through yet as I plan to do a top end rebuild/refresh this winter. It runs strong apart from that hesitation bit and some noise from the lifters.

It starts fine if it's been run in the last couple of days, but otherwise seems to need a squirt down the carb to breath some life into it.

1971 SBO 350, stock (to the best of my knowledge) except dual exhaust, Quadrajet.

Could this be a vacuum thing (a missing/broken line somewhere), varnishing, something that might be curable with some carb cleaner, stuck something or another?

 

10 years sitting, it's time to rebuild it anyway. Also Check rubber fuel lines from tank to carb if they sat with fuel in them for 10 years they are probably shot and need replaced.

 

my 72 dose the samething

 

I replaced all of my fuel and vaccum lines and my hesitation has diappeared. My hadn't ran for 5 or so years and was only run once a year before that since 1990. My hoses may have been a lot worse than yours.

 

Apparently it was rebuilt at some point by a QJet 'expert', not quite sure how many miles on that rebuild though. From what I understand the QJet can be kinda finicky so I'm holding off on the rebuild option for now in hopes of a less expensive problem being identified.

Like this one ;-)

Hopefully my experience will be similar to Maverick's and some hose replacement/cleanup will be all that's needed.