Hesitation at 60 mph and up

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if you are nasty at idle, your carb is probably plugged up wit all the crud you picked up when you ran it out of gas. Reverse flow fuel line to tank with compressed air, just give it a shot from a compressor with the CAP OFF (or else you'll bellow the tank) Now you got all the particles back in suspension, youll need to purge the tank. Put filterless fuel line into bucket and pressurize tank from filler (get something round and flat and drill a hole in it, put over filler pipe and stick blow gun into hole and pressurize slowly until you are pumping fuel out of tank. thats bad gas, put into lawn mower if its clean, if its dirty...? you dont really need the sock, just make sure you run 2 inline filters, one at tank outlet and one at carb. Youll need to clean carb idle circuit, or a basic carb cleaning. Gumout can and some compressed air. you can get into tank later to repair sock, its a fine mesh bag that fits over inlet pipe, probably just a rusted hulk in there right now. I blew a rusted one up with compressed air and it blew with a cloud of red dust.
Buy replacement sock and run car until its as close to empty as you dare. There is a ring around the fuel sender that comes off wiht a counterclockwise twist, you usually tap it with a non-metallic mallet like brass or plastic and itll turn enough to come off, Now you can manipulate the sender out of the tank (it'll reek of gas down there, give yourself an 'out') and crimp new sock onto pipe. You may want to try and retrice the old sock if it didnt come out with sender, most likely it will be blown out but still on pipe. My Mazda has an electric pump and a plugged filter. It would run fine at idle all day until you got on it and it would run for about 30 seconds and then bog terribly. then it would catch up if you let it idle again to start the cycle again. REplaced the $3 filter and ran great after than. It didnt even look bad as it was semi clear, and still white but the new one cured the problem.
 
The advice is good but in my experience, when the engine begins to starve for fuel from a restriction somewhere, you can actually make it worse by giving it some heavy foot.

I don't advocate trying to drive faster to try this, but when you have a good clear road, stop and take off and run it up to the speed limit pretty hard. If it takes off and goes it's probably not a restriction.

If it loses power the more you try to force it to go, then that's a restriction. The carb bowl will run dry faster than the fuel pump can supply it, so then the engine begins to sputter and lose power. Once you let up on the pedal, the fuel pump can catch up and it runs again.

My feeling is that there's dirt in the carb and it needs to be overhauled by someone who is competent. If you find dirt and rust somewhere then that issue won't go away until the tank gets cleaned or replaced.
 
I'd like to piggy back this conversation. 1963 slant six valiant. I have issue, except i didn't run out of gas. i was cruising on freeway around 64mph, loss power. was able to limp back home. on a cold start it won't hold an idle unless i cover the carb. how do i fix this lean situation?
 
Hi again, problem solved. I took the carb apart and found an old piece a RTV silicon in the metering rod tube (I think thats what its called). The previous owner had the RTV silicon around the float bowl gasket, some must have broken loose and got jammed up in there. Also they double stacked the gasket from the intake manifold and the carburetor, which may have caused a vacuum leak. Well on to the next project......http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/images/smilies/eusa_pray.gif
 
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