Ok so when my truck is cold it doesn't run very well - it idles just fine in neutral but if you try and put it in gear before it's above 130 degrees it'll usually just die. If for some good fortune it'll actually stay running in gear at idle if you try to drive then most of the time it'll give a pop through the air cleaner and die. Tonight I fired it up and it idled fine in gear, then I started driving and it was ok for a block and a half, then when I started pulling away from the stop sign it fired a round through the carb and it hasn't tried to make an explosion since.

I was low on fuel (1/16 tank) so I tossed the remains of my fuel jug into it and took the air cleaner off to find the carb soaking inside, so fuel isn't the problem. Since it's 10pm I didn't want to sit in my driveway trying to diagnose the problem so I gave up for the evening, but I'm really fed up with this whole carb situation. My mustang fires up every time and runs all the time. It had a stalling problem when stopping for a while, but I understand how to change the parameters in the ECU and so I took care of that. I'm just sick and tired of fixing **** on this truck and I'm seriously tempted to sell off the truck and my Jetta in favor of a lot newer truck, or perhaps another jeep.

This is a post out of utter frustration at having to ask my neighbor's drunken friend to drag his old Ford out of the driveway to pull me back home.

 

If it's firing thru the carb it sounds like either your timing is off, or you've got plug wires arcing and causing a misfire. That's the first place I'd check. It really sounds like a timing issue to me.

 

only does it when it's cold. I was thinking about backing the timing off a smidge anyway, so it's good to have somebody else confirming my suspicion. Why would it only have a problem when cold though? And why wouldn't it start again after this last time? I'm going to try and fire it up in about 20 minutes and see if maybe it just got super flooded last night, but it didn't even sound like it was trying to ignite.

 

You could have gas-fouled your plugs. Or completely vapor-locked it. If it's firing thru the intake at all, it has to be ignition related. The spark has to be getting past an intake valve somehow. Firing thru the intake is VERY hard on the carb too. If you've got a Holley, one backfire can blow out the power valve and cause all kinds of problems.

 

I fixed it this morning. The power valve thing I've heard is not an issue anymore but rather the skeleton that holley can't remove from it's closet. I've perhaps had three or four dozen backfires run through my carb and it's still working great.

Side note: The problem was due to the backfire - it wedged the holy hell out of my choke butterfly so there wasn't any air getting in my motor, hence it wouldn't fire. Nothing a sharb poke with a finger didn't fix though. I did grab my wrench this morning and back the timing off a bit and it's running a LOT better cold now than it ever has before. I need to get a timing light and see where it's at. It doesn't stall, it doesn't stumble off-idle anymore, it even seems to have more power. I also put $72 worth of regular unleaded in it on my way to work - before I was running super. Somewhere along the line I switched to super in part due to the advanced timing and also because I read that running the orange ECM it worked better. Seems to work just fine like it is, although it is a bit smellier.