88 Yugo GV scare

FAMICOMASTER

FAMICOMASTER

Yugo owner
Alright, I pulled a dumb one here, and I'm going to hate myself forever if it turns out I really screwed this thing up.

Car lost brakes totally while driving the other day, the master seals gave out. Pulled over and shut car off. Father comes by with his car trailer and we roll it to a shop to have the master rebuilt.

When rolling the car onto and off of the trailer, I have no brakes, so to stop I had the gearbox in second and let off the clutch to halt the car.

This includes rolling the car back off of the trailer at the shop. I used second instead of reverse. It may have rolled MAX 40 feet. I'm sure the engine did at least one full rotation in reverse, maybe 3 or 4.

I haven't cranked the car since I realized I did this because I'm frightened I've bent a valve or something. No scary noises when it was rolling.
This happened Monday morning and I've got conflicting answers from everyone I've asked, even Google gives 50/50 on breaking something, and the wiki says "Do not rotate in reverse" in the timing belt guide.

I suppose what I'm asking is whether or not I should be okay to crank the engine and whether or not I've damaged my valvetrain.
 
I very much doubt that you damaged anything. Not rotating in reverse is important before you have torqed down the tensioner bearing during a timing belt change, less critical at other times. Does the timing belt seem reasonably taut? I would rotate the engine forward until you get to TDC (according to flywheel or crank pulley marks) and check if the cam pulley is at the correct mark. If it all lines up it is hard to imagine that any harm was done.
 
The belt is still just as taught as it was when I put it on last year. About a quarter inch or so of deflection if you push on the long side. My car does not have the metal timing teeth like an X does, and the marks are chewed off my plastic cover. I'll have to check if I even have the flywheel inspection plate, but I'll do that in the morning.
 
Yeah, check your cam timing, then crank it.
Good thing you didn‘t use reverse.
 
Well, cranked it but no start. Fuel pump doesn't seem happy anymore because I've got zero fuel coming out of the top of it. Filter is brand new too.

Some 2 stroke gas down the intake and it acted like it was going to start, does this seem normal to you guys?
 
FAMICOMASTER said:
Well, cranked it but no start. Fuel pump doesn't seem happy anymore because I've got zero fuel coming out of the top of it. Filter is brand new too.

Some 2 stroke gas down the intake and it acted like it was going to start, does this seem normal to you guys?
Click to expand...
Pretty typical.

First drain the tank of whatever is in it. You could be trying to burn water as water settles to the bottom of the tank. Water doesn’t burn :)

Can you get gas to the engine bay? If not the line could be clogged.
Try using ether/starting fluid sprayed in. Generally any engine will start with that.

Once it starts the mechanical fuel pump will get enough pumps/vacuum to pull fuel through and on the second or at most the third attempt the carb will fill and you can run the engine.
 
Alright, cool. I thought I was going crazy for a minute.
The tank only had about a gallon in it so we filled it completely in case maybe the sender wasn't picking anything up, and it helped, there is now fuel getting to the clear filter, but there isn't a whole lot and it's very slow.

If you put the throttle all the way open and crank the car it will run very poorly for 30 seconds to a minute before it dies, presumably it's out of fuel.

Thinking the line might be clogged. I've borrowed my father's air compressor for the week to blow out the lines when I get the chance next.
Anything I should know besides disconnecting the lines before attempting this?
 
Just disconnect the line at both ends, you don’t want to pressurize the tank and the associated check valves etc.

Replace your rubber lines, add new fuel filters, a coarse one before the fuel pump and a fine filter before the carb.

Your fuel pump could easily be toast with a torn/worn diaphragm. Have you checked to see if it is dumping fuel into your crank case?
 
The car received a new mechanical fuel pump when I switched from the electric pump several months ago, so it should be fine, but the seller has already sent out a new unit under warranty so it will be replaced anyways. At that time it also received a new fuel filter and all new lines (The mechanical pump is in a different spot from where the electrical one was).

Where would I get a fine filter? I've had enough troubles with this car and it's carburetor that I would prefer not to have to rebuild this, it's fourth carburetor.
 
I would look for a larger translucent filter which when you look at it looks like a paper cone as the initial filter. Translucent allows you to see when it starts to turn brown.

The second filter should also be translucent but looks more like a cartridge inside the plastic housing with around 10 micron filtration rating.
 
The translucent filter is already on the car. Where would I get a fine filter like that? I'm not sure what you're talking about
 
FAMICOMASTER said:
The translucent filter is already on the car. Where would I get a fine filter like that? I'm not sure what you're talking about
Click to expand...
This would be an example. Note the filtration spec and you can see what looks like a filter cartridge inside.

Basically you are trying to keep the big chunks out of the fuel pump and the fines out of the carb and its jets.

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The fitting where the fuel line is on the carburetor is threaded, and I have seen some Motorcraft carburetors have what appears to be a filter there.

Would there be a part number to look for to get one of these filters? Carquest 86933 looks like it might work but I'm not sure.
 
Found it. Baldwin BF879 threads into the carburetor. I believe this is a "Fine" fuel filter but I'm not able to find any specs.

Raining hard so I wasn't able to do much.
 
Alright, drained the tank of everything and added about 3 gallons of fresh gas and the red bottle of Heet for good measure. The car will now run if you hold the throttle wide open but dies as soon as the choke opens.

Any thoughts? The car was driving itself before any of this brake stuff happened.
 
If this is at all related to brake work, then I would look at the brake booster and the vacuum line leading to it. If it dies without choke, it would imply that it is running very lean. A missing/broken vacuum hose or leaking booster certainly would cause a lean condition.
 
The exhaust smells extremely rich and all four plugs are pretty dark, so I don't think it's running lean. As the choke opens, the engine slows down and eventually dies.

I'm more worried about the car not running at all unless the throttle is half open or more. Turning the idle screw up doesn't do anything helpful.
 
If it will only run with the choke, there is a air leak somewhere. Hard to judge the mixture from the plugs since it never actually runs properly. Remove the hose going to the brake booster, and plug that hose, see if there is a change. You don't have many vacuum hoses, so a vacuum leak should be fairly easy to track down.
 
The car never had it's emissions deleted and is a factory AC car. There is a huge maze of vacuum lines going everywhere.
 
How does a 1988 vehicle still have a carb?
I would pull ALL the vacuum lines off the carb and use those little rubber caps to close the ports on the carb and start from there.
 
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