carbed festy starving

[barno68]

easywind- I am thinking that it is not a fuel starvation issue as the float level is good. I am leaning toward too much fuel, which would explain the 4000rpm idle. I have the carb torn apart now and picked up a rebuild kit, but have not seen anything out of the ordinary yet. It was not that dirty either.

Can anyone give me a break down of the electronic controls on these carbs? There are four electrical devices (five if you count the base gasket) on the carb. One is the fast idle, another the choke... one is a vacuum valve of some sort, not sure on the last one.

[easywind]

Brent, my posts were addressed to carbonmax. You sound like you have a choke problem.

[barno68]

Brent, my posts were addressed to carbonmax. You sound like you have a choke problem.

My bad :lol:

[neanderpaul]

easywind, thanks for taking the time to make these suggestions. The fuel pump was fine. I still replaced it with a new one. The pick up in the tank has a screen on it. It is clear and there is zero debris in the tank. I think I have given up. We are going to use this car for the bp/g25mr swap.

[easywind]

carbonmax, before you give up why don't you try the automotive forums at doityourself.com they have a few older guys there that really know their stuff.

[neanderpaul]

Because I already have an escort GT and an aspire and have traded for the labor to get it built. And the LX in question is straight and has low miles.

[MAVRICK513]

Carbed Festiva bucking & starving for fuel

Just for giggles, try taking the fuel filter out of the wire basket it sits in near the fire wall. Just take it out of the basket & let it hang, then drive the car. I had the same problem a few years ago. Initially it was that my fuel filter gelled up during our cold winter. The old filter was not in the basket so to clean things up I put the new one in the basket. It would buck in 2ND gear & then shut off on me. I could restart it after about 30 seconds but the problem continued. After changing the fuel pump & checking fuel pressure, and running out of things to check, I finally took the filter out of the basket. Turns out that the angle necessary to put the filter in the basket slightly kinked & restricted the fuel line hose going into the filter & starved the carb. Give it a shot! Otherwise it may be that something was damaged in the fire. Check your fuel pressure going to the carb & work backwards from there. Don't rule out a bad new fuel pump too. I have seen a few of those.

[neanderpaul]

I will certainly try it. thanks!

[barno68]

Coabonvmax- I just went through something similar last week, if you have not checked the float level take a look at it. There is a sightglass on the passenger side of the carb that can easily be seen with the air cleaner still installed. If that looks good (I know you have replaced the carb), take a look at the vacuum idle adjust, it is on the drivers side of the carb behind the throttle linkage. It is controlled by a vacuum relay on the firewall. Try disconnecting the vacuum line at the diaphram itself and plug the line. I went through all the same troubleshooting as you and finally saw that, for whatever reason, the idle adjust was racking the throttle linkage and dumping fuel in the bowl. But, it took all the other replacements (rebuilt carb, replaced plugs, wires, cap, rotor, adjusted timing, cleaned EGR) to get it to the point where it would run long enough to find this problem. Anyway, sounds similar as mine was bucking, idling fine and had no power, but if I could get it rolling fast enough and put my foot down it was run like a scalded ape at high rpm.

[litesong]

Let me join in! My wonderful 4 speed 88 carbed Festiva just started to buck & stall too. Was able to floor, clutch, & feather foot to my mechanic 15 miles away. At this moment he is looking for fuel injection to install which I've always wanted. Used to average 45MPG with long flat highway trips giving 53MPG. 15 years ago, I had spark plug wires changed after bucking started & all was back to normal. Still was running well till the bucking, altho MPG was off. Do you think the fuel injection is a good idea? Might I expect more power or MPG? Don't really need the power, but the wonderful MPG of a decade past would be sweet.

May convert to full electric battery power sometime in the future, but not right now. Our wonderful Northwest electric power is generated with equivalent Kilowatts to HP producing only 4% of the pollution of Internal Combustion Engines.

[krbballer]

Has anyone solved this issue? My problem is real similar to some of the descriptions listed here.

88L 4-speed

No idle issues as far as I can tell, however there is no tachometer for me to tell what my rpms are. But it sounds fine.

Getting into first no problem, after switching into second, and pressing the gas to accelerate, the car bucks maybe hestitates a little. Once I get going in 2nd a bit it smooths out. Same thing happens sometimes going from 2nd to 3rd, but never from 3rd to 4th.

Anyone?

[zoe60]

I went through all the stuff in all these replies, and after rebuilding my carb and making sure all the vacuum lines are correctly installed, the thing that helped the most for me was a new 02 sensor. One vacuum leak I had in the beginning though was the advance on the distributor. Put a clean hose on it and suck on it and if it leaks air you've got a problem with it. Good luck, feedback carbs can be tricky. On the bright side, I did get mine running great eventually!

[krbballer]

Here's what fixed and likely caused the problem with my festiva. I ran seafoam through it about 2 or 3 weeks ago. However, during the first attempt (I was doing it by myself trying to suck it up through the PCV valve), I stalled the car out. I left the little container of seafoam on the engine and restarted the car. But, obviously the container fell over and spilled down the front of the car. It smoked and everything and I wondered if the car was going to set on fire, but nothing happened. So I refilled the container, set the gas pedal in with a 12 pack of water bottles and sucked it all through. I turned the car off, came back about 20 minutes later and restarted. No smoke from the exhaust. Nothing.

So anyways, the car started hestitating later as described above. I don't really remember if it was exactly later, 2 days later, 3 days later... I don't remember. But the problem only got worse. I did notice the wiring connections in the front where the seafoam had spilled started getting gummed up with crap though. The stuff never really dissolved, it just made the electrical fittings black/muddy.

So the work I did on the car was I changed the O2 sensor and bought electrical spray cleaner. I disconnected all of the electrical connections, sprayed them out with the cleaner and reconnected them.

Now the car runs as if its new. Much better than when I bought it and better than I thought was possible. The idle is much lower and the engine is very quiet. No more hestitation and the acceleration seems better (maybe I'm making that part up). So, was it the O2 sensor or the gummed/crapped up electrical connections? Maybe both?

But that solved my bucking problem after switching into second and accelerating.

[geezerstiva]

dont think its the O2 sensor as i've done that myself and it didn't help. electrical connections... gotta try that.

[88FestivaLX]

I'm still having the same problem....I put up with it for a while, but now its irritating me way too often. Also, I normally shift at 3k rpms....its seems like a waste to shift higher b/c it doesn't seem to do much between 3k and redline.....could this be another problem that could cause this?