Hi all,
With the last few days of great weather here in the northeast, I've been
spending more time with my car than is usual for November. I'm sure
it'll be snowing soon, but for now...
Anyway, on to the problem. Recently, my 2000 has had problems
accelerating under load, especially when cold. Essentially, the engine
will start and warm pretty much as usual, although there is occasionally
some light popping while warming up. Sitting in the driveway, with the
clutch in, the engine RPM's will come smoothly up with the pedal once
the engine starts to get warm.
However, trying to actually drive the car or accelerate leads to
coughing, hesitation, backfiring and general misery until the car
reaches its final stable engine temp (just below the tiny Fahrenheit
sign on the temp gauge). Usually if I can soldier through this phase
and keep the RPM's up, the car will then smooth out.
So, being pretty new at all this, I have several questions:
1) is the mixture too lean? The mechanic who has tuned my car in the
past says if he richens the mix any more, I'll start getting tons of
deposits on the plugs, but I don't know...
2) Am I depositing tons of junk on the plugs during the warmup that once
it burns off, lets the engine run better?
3) do I have a spark or distributor problem?
4) carb problem?
Any suggestions here would be appreciated, since I have to start
troubleshooting somewhere.
Thanks,
Andrew
1970 SRL311-13183
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