Racingman9977

Ok, I just bought a 1986 jacked up chevy manual transmission with a 355 in it. the guy said it has a cam and that the engine was in a race car before it was put into this pickup.

The engine is acting funny and am wondering if anyone can help me. It will start up and drive, but when driving down the road it seems really boggy with hard anypower. I have to keep my rpms up. The next wierd thing is it cranks fine when its cold (like if its been sitting for a day), but if you drive it for like 5 minute or at least until its warmed up and shut it off then you go and try to start it again it cranks really hard like its catch on something or acts like it has way to much compression even though it doesnt, for a number of turns then usually it kicks out of it and then starts to crank faster. Also the other day when i was driving it and it seemed boggy it popped or pinged few times out the exhaust and cut out on me unless i had the rpms higher. Its seems like its missing too when driving it down the road. I am thinking of checking all the wires and plugs, but I was wondering if it sounds more like a timing issue because of the other symptoms???? I also tried messing with the carb tuning so I do not think it is the carb, but I could be wrong. Its a edelbrock 1406 4 barrel carb. I tried to tune it up and it seemed like it runs a little better, but its still boggy and no power and feels like its missing.

Anyone have a suggestions of what I should try to look at or check or if anyone else has had anything like this happen to them???

marvgreen

i would go through timing not just ignition but cam timing and ignition.
and not a fan of that carburator. love a good old rochester. also wonder
what compression it has. as small chamber heads etc.

Racingman9977

hey, thanks for the reply. I actually did some troubleshooting myself and figured out what was wrong. I took the distributor cap off and turned the crank and there was some play. So I decided to check the timing chain and found out that is had only timing gears instead of chain driven. the timing cam gear had play in it because where the 3 bolts hold it to the cam the holes in the gear were bigger then the bolts so it would rotate back and forth a little bit. I ended up putting a regular chain timing gear setup on and it had smaller bolt holes so now there is no play. I put it back together and it ran better and no more hard start at all after it was warmed up. it ran like it should and started fine, but there was still a miss. found cylinder number two had 0 compression. took off the valve cover and found a rocker arm slipped off because a valve spring broke. push rod was bent too and i cant see my lifter so im hoping the inside part of the lifter did not fall down in the engine. it looks like the casing of the cam lifter is still there but when i stick the push rod into it seems like there is no bottom so its makes me wonder. I have decided i am just going to pull everything back apart again and take the head and intake manifold off to figure out what went wrong. SO needs little work but we are getting to the top of the problems.

..........what do you recommend for carburetors if i want to put something good on there that will work good, since you said your not a fan of this one on there already?