Woot! The pig lives. It's been about a month since I've posted. My work took me away for about half of that, and I managed to sneak away for a few days of vacation somewhere in there... regardless, I've thrown enough time at the project to successfully do my first hot laps around the neighborhood!
First, the clutch was/is fine. But let's start at the beginning.
1) Tuning the carb, I learned that I could get it to purr like a cat when idling, but any acceleration caused idle to nose-dive and the car would stall. This led me to investigate vacuum leaks and the accelerator pump/circuit. I'm glad I checked! Of the six bolts holding the manifold to the block, two were missing and a third was only finger tight. I didn't have a vacuum leak, I had a yawning vacuum cave. Thanks to my brother-in-law
@RogerThat for lending a hand that evening.
2) The Chinese carb came back off for a rebuild. Third, maybe fourth time rebuilding it. The buggered hole for accessing the second main jet, the hole I had to tap and fit with a pipe plug, was
still leaking. So I had to tap to a massive 1/2-20 hole. Good lord. Sealed it up, though.
3) Despite the carb rebuild and the fixed manifold leak, the bastard still wouldn't handle a sharp twist on the accelerator linkage. If
slowly ramping up from low rpm to very high rpm, the carb would respond just fine. The fact that only a quick turn of the accelerator linkage would kill it leads me to believe the accelerator pump may have been to blame (
@ridefastflyfar actually suggested this first). At this point, considering the number of times I've pulled the Chinese carb off, it was time to go back to an OEM carb. I had most of the carb rebuild kit's components remaining, and I used them to rebuild this little gem (off a 1984 FJ60). So many little levers and diaphragms, but this is getting less intimidating with every carb rebuild:
Curiously, when rebuilding the Aisan carb I found that the Pump Outlet plunger appeared to be "peened" in place. I wasn't sure if this would cause an issue or not, but proceeded with the rebuild and re-installed.
4) Good lord my timing was off. And I mean WAY off. Despite lining up TDC with the BB on the flywheel (and yes assuring the compression stroke) like four or five times this summer, I was still off two teeth on the distributor rotation. I'm thinking this may be a result of an early 2F engine, a de-smogged setup, and a late 2F (uber-fancy) carburetor. No idea. All I know is that when I got the timing set correctly, using a vacuum gauge to detect lean drop-off as I've read... suddenly the car runs. RUNS. My clutch wasn't shot, my timing was so far off that increasing RPM was virtually impossible.
5) The green pig is gone. I'll draw some gasps of disapproval, I'm sure, but I've sold the body, glass, and frame to a buddy here in Boise. Having already scavenged anything of value from the engine compartment, body trim, and interior, I was holding onto it in the event something is awry with the red one's axles, drive lines, transfer case, etc. My buddy will return all those items to me once he's swapped his 3/4 ton Chevy running gear underneath. His plans are to build some sort of franken beast with 37" tires, bucket seats, probably some diamond plating, custom bumpers and roll bars... he keeps using the term "roachy", which I've interpreted to mean an awesomely over-the-top crusty yet capable desert rat. I'm glad to support such shenanigans. Adios, piggy verde:
So what's next? Dunno yet. I'm over the moon that it's finally really running. I was terrified that the compression was low enough to warrant a full rebuild, something my budget would not allow. So I'll just celebrate this for a while, start puttering around the neighborhood and planning next steps.
... woot!
