does your haynes manual show the routing?

 

I have been studying it. It's not very clear. Imagine that.

 

what about the emissions lable in the front of the truck?

I was looking further at the evap setup in the manual and the 2 canisters on the frame rail are also to be considered in all this. one thing i could suggest is getting your digital camera and finding a '97 on a lot and go snap some pics of the evap setup. maybe that will shed some light on it.

 

your missing the vacuum line off the TB... is it off for a reason in this pic? the one next to the map sensor

 

It took me a while to find vacuum line to fit that. Yes, it was off on purpose in this picture as I was preparing to replace it.

Now, I swapped the two lines on the Evap Purge Solenoid to see what would happen. Now, if I press the throttle to 2K rpm, it holds without fluctuating. That's the good news. The bad news is that acceleration isn't that impressive, I top out around 75mph going up a mild grade (mild struggling) and the vent line *STILL* spouts gas. Once I loosen the gas cap, pressure is released and the drainage stops.

I was wrong earlier, when pressure is relieve it is a vacuum type pressure.

I am also wondering if perhaps my catalytic converter is clogged. Before I removed the engine, the truck had a very difficult time making mild grades and the converter would rattle. Looks like I am making ground, but I am still stumped.

 

You might look at your timing too, if its not set correctly you will loose power like you are describing. Also it sounds like your converter may be clogged, do you have an IR thermometer? If so you can test the cat, temperature should be hotter on the outlet side than the inlet, if they aren't the cat is bad.

 

I don't have an IR thermometer, but I should get one. I am now waiting for the truck to cool down so I can verify the position of #1, set it, adjust the distributor, lock it down, and then route the plug wires. I can go to a muffler shop I know, on Monday, and have them shoot the cat.

 

I can't say enough about how handy my IR thermometer is, the best part was I didn't pay anything for it. I had a friend who worked at Auto Zone some guy bought one and they ordered it but he never came back to get it. It hung around for 6 months and I noticed it and he gave it to me. It's a Raytech, same one my uncle got off the Snap-On truck and probably paid way too much for lol.

 

I would still like to know why in the hell fuel is coming out of the vent. This is pissing me off [:@]

 

Where are you at in Oklahoma? I'm really close to the Oklahoma/Kansas line and would probably be alot more help if I could look at it rather than just try to think of things.