frank Jacobs
Daily Driver
Hi guys, I am Frank from the Netherlands, and I am finally again a proud owner of a X1/9 1500 from 1981, my second X1/9, after I had to part from my previous X1/9 some years ago (1977 serie speciale)..
I have a question and I am sure you are the right people to ask:
After replacing the timing belt and setting ignition timing, I am experiencing some problems getting the car to drive smoothly. On the road, I have to be very careful with accelerating, to prevent the engine from stuttering. This is particularly the case accelerating after driving at ~2500 rpm. Once I press the accelerator pedal, the engine stutters, and then picks up speed. Once it picks up speed it eventually reaches 5000 rpm without apparent problems. With the car in place, Idling is fine, even revving above 3000 rpm when the car stands still shows no problems.
For diagnostics, here is what I tried:
- First, I set timing to 0 TDC when replacing the timing belt. I made sure the notch on the flywheel aligns with the 0 degree line on the little window on the left of the engine (bell house?), and at the same time the dimple on the camshaft wheel aligns with the metal finger on the metal belt cover backplate. So cam/crankshaft timing seems OK. I used a timing light to set ignition timing to 5 BTDC.
With this setting (recommended for carb version of the 1500), the engine idle speed was a bit low and I adjusted the idle speed with the idling screw to ~ 1000 rpm. Testdriving the car was pretty bad, almost impossible to accelerate, so I took it back.
Because the stuttering resembled what you get if some dirt is blocking the jets, I cleaned the bowl of the carb + jets thoroughly. I noticed the floatlevel was a bit off and I reset that to specs. The needle seemed fine to me. Confident that this would have solved the problem I took it for a drive but unfortunately I had the same problems.
I decided to change ignition timing a little bit to see if that made a difference, and it did. Putting it at 0 or 3 BTDC makes things worse. Putting it at 10 BTDC makes things better, but still if I press the accelerator a bit too fast it will stutter. (Strangely, I noticed that if I change ignition timing beyond 10 BTDC, the idle speed picks up a little and the engine runs smoother..)
Anyone any ideas what could be wrong? Why wont it run smoothly with the recommended ignition timing of 5 BTDC? Could it be that I messed up the carb settings?
I know you have the answers
Best,
Frank
I have a question and I am sure you are the right people to ask:
After replacing the timing belt and setting ignition timing, I am experiencing some problems getting the car to drive smoothly. On the road, I have to be very careful with accelerating, to prevent the engine from stuttering. This is particularly the case accelerating after driving at ~2500 rpm. Once I press the accelerator pedal, the engine stutters, and then picks up speed. Once it picks up speed it eventually reaches 5000 rpm without apparent problems. With the car in place, Idling is fine, even revving above 3000 rpm when the car stands still shows no problems.
For diagnostics, here is what I tried:
- First, I set timing to 0 TDC when replacing the timing belt. I made sure the notch on the flywheel aligns with the 0 degree line on the little window on the left of the engine (bell house?), and at the same time the dimple on the camshaft wheel aligns with the metal finger on the metal belt cover backplate. So cam/crankshaft timing seems OK. I used a timing light to set ignition timing to 5 BTDC.
With this setting (recommended for carb version of the 1500), the engine idle speed was a bit low and I adjusted the idle speed with the idling screw to ~ 1000 rpm. Testdriving the car was pretty bad, almost impossible to accelerate, so I took it back.
Because the stuttering resembled what you get if some dirt is blocking the jets, I cleaned the bowl of the carb + jets thoroughly. I noticed the floatlevel was a bit off and I reset that to specs. The needle seemed fine to me. Confident that this would have solved the problem I took it for a drive but unfortunately I had the same problems.
I decided to change ignition timing a little bit to see if that made a difference, and it did. Putting it at 0 or 3 BTDC makes things worse. Putting it at 10 BTDC makes things better, but still if I press the accelerator a bit too fast it will stutter. (Strangely, I noticed that if I change ignition timing beyond 10 BTDC, the idle speed picks up a little and the engine runs smoother..)
Anyone any ideas what could be wrong? Why wont it run smoothly with the recommended ignition timing of 5 BTDC? Could it be that I messed up the carb settings?
I know you have the answers
Best,
Frank