Help with Electrical Gremlin

cudajames said

I stole some time to work on the car. The positive connection was loose. I tightened it about a 1/4 turn.
Checked all other connections and everything looks good. All grounds are in place and good condition.
The car fires up with no problem but I am not able to keep it running before it dies out. This includes giving it throttle to about 2000 rpm.
The electrical problem has not reappeared, possible from a broken ring terminal that I replaced earlier.
Oh, and this time I did not use the Optima battery.

It seems one problem was solved and there is a new problem.

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Here's what I would do in this situation.

Start the car and wait until it dies.

1. Pull an ignition wire off a spark plug and have someone turn the engine over while holding the boot close to a metal surface on the engine. If the ignition is working , you should see a spark at the boot jumping to the metal surface.

2. If you are getting spark, next, check to see if there is fuel going to carb. Disconnect the line going to the carb and run a hose from it into a container. Turn the engine over again and observe fuel flow into container. It should be a constant and very strong flow.

These simple checks should eliminate one of these as the cause of your problem and then you can concentrate on the components in the particular system that's failing.