I'd like to start by thanking everyone for their posts. I read half the archives in this forum before rebuilding my carb. All the posts with useful information and the success stories were great very helpful.

Before the rebuild, my van was spewing thick black smoke, and even occasionally had some nasty flames shooting from the muffler (which had exploded, probably from afterburning).

With just the rebuild and a few adjustments, I've got it idling at about 900 in gear and around 1800 in park. I'm not sure I have everything set right, particularly the idle mixture screws, but the idle is steady now, with only occasional misses.

The current problem is backfiring above idle. I'm on my way out to get a timing light to retime it. Hopefully that will take care of the backfires.

The van has every pollution control system known to man, and I'm looking to disconnect as many of them as I can. I've got a lot of it disconnected already, and I think I've got all the vacuum leaks plugged, but I'm not sure where to hook up the distributor advance. Currently, it is on the port on the block under the carb, which seems to be straight manifold vacuum. Is that a good choice, or is there a proper spark port?

Also, there was some confusion about the gaskets under the carb. When I pulled the stack off, there was a thin paper gasket on top of the manifold, then a plastic spacer, another paper gasket, and then the carb. The rebuild kit had a thick rubber gasket, so I put that between the plastic spacer and the carb. So far so good, I guess. Makes the studs a bit short, but the nuts hold.

Also, this isn't fuel related, but sometimes when the engine gets hot, the starter stalls and it just clicks. Sometimes fiddling with the battery cables fixes it, but sometimes not.

 

Clean all the battery terminals, both ends of both cables, the big posts on the solenoid, both ends of the cable from the solenoid and the starter post for the cable, and the block where the ground cable is connected and see if you still have trouble with hot starts. Larger guage cables help deliver more amps if the ones you have need replacing (less resistance).

700-800 RPM in gear is what you are shooting for. Worry about that when you are sure of the timing. Clean off what emissions you are intending on eliminating. Eliminate all vacuum leaks. Then you can tune your carb setting and idle speed. All the other will affect the carb and idle, so do that last.

 

New 2GA wires all around and I find out the starter is bad. Bad enough to blow the breaker in the tester when I went in to get a new one, which was amusing.

Right now, it is driveable; far better than it has been in years, no black smoke (still smells really rich though) and I don't need to powerbrake it at stops to keep it running, but it is still way out of tune.

The line to the EGR valve is disconnected, I think I have a PCV leak, and the idle is insanely high. The ECS / EVAP system has me pretty well confused. Part is that it seems to be connected together with everything else, and part is that the diagrams in my Haynes manual have a mystery connection that isn't labelled (page 166 if you have the same purple Haynes book that I have).

I've got the distributor connected to what appeared to be a direct manifold port, but I wasn't able to actually see the timing marks. My sissy timing light just couldn't compete with the sun today.

Still to do on it:

1) double check the choke and fast idle cam
2) finish ripping out vacuum lines and plugging ports.
3) fix the PCV stuff
4) set the idle timing
5) bring the idle down
6) set the idle mixtures (still way too rich)

When I'm not begging for rides to work, this is kinda fun, in some vague way.

 

Choke is working. All emissions crap is gone except the ECS/EVAP which is hopefully connected correctly. Thanks to some crafty electrical tape work, the PCV system doesn't seem to be leaking any more.

Idle is around 700-800 in gear, 1600 in park/neutral. Timing is dead on 10 BTDC, but that is at 1600 RPM (the sticker says to do it at 500 RPM).

It really doesn't seem to want to idle any lower. Will I be able to bring it down as I adjust the mixture? Will the idle get stronger so it can actually stay running when I put it in gear as I bring it down?