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On 1 Jun 2003 at 10:21, JBRIGS wrote: > This is a bit drawn out so bear with me. I bought a '73 T3 about 2 > months ago. I noticed that it seemed to have a misfire while idling in > drive(auto trans), it didn't have much power, and when I really pushed > it to get up a hill, it would just barely make it and I could smell a > VERY strong gas odor. I set the timing and adjusted the points. The > coil, distributor, cap, rotor, wires, battery, and fuel filter are all > new. I hope you saved your old parts. Many of the original parts are better than what you can buy as replacements today, specifically the plug wires (or parts of them,) the coil, and the condensor. The dist caps and rotors almost never go bad, either, if they are original Bosch. You should also adjust the valves. > I had the car running a bit better, so we drove it to my in-laws(20 > mile trip). The car was down on power again for the first half of the > trip and then suddenly, It gained power and I was able to do the spped > limit! I did notice a misfire and the car was bucking slightly at > highway speed. When we arrived at our destination, there was smoke > coming out of the air intakes and from the rear wheel wells! I could > not get the car started to go home and it leaked a rather large amount > of oil on to the road. > The car was towed to a garage that claimed that they could fix it. They > have had the car for a month and they say that everything looks new as > far as the ignition parts. They ordered a new distributor, but they > aren't sure what the problem is. I'm starting to think that I should > give up on this car. I'd like to fix it myself, but my experience is > limited. Any advice?? I'd get the car home. A new distributor is almost certainly NOT the problem. (Plus there's probably no such thing as a NEW distributor for this car.) They don't know what to do, so they're just spending your money while they think about it. Here's some tests that you can do yourself. Get in the car and turn the key ON. You should hear a relay click and then another click about 1 second later. Do you hear both clicks? You should. Get a friend to help you. Have him do the test above while you listen under the front bumper. You're listening for the buzz of the electric fuel pump. It should buzz for that ~1 second between relay clicks. Do you hear it? You should. Go to the engine and with the key ON, depress the throttle. You should hear a series of clicks as you do this. There should be no clicks as you let the throttle back up. Clip an inductive timing light around one of the spark plug leads and have someone crank the starter. Does the timing light flash? Use this to make sure you're getting spark. If you're getting spark make sure that it's at the right time. 73 timing marks look like: | | | |, where the notch NEXT to the leftmost is TDC and the notch NEXT to rightmost is 5 deg BTDC . Your engine should be timed to 5 deg BTDC. Let us know what you find in these tests. You will become your best mechanic. You've got lots of help here so hang in there, and you'll have a fine little car pretty quickly. The Bentley manual is the best one out there. You'll need metric tools, a voltmeter, feeler gauges, dwell/tach, timing light, etc. -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org