Skip to content

Pre-ignition(?)/vac leak

Featured Replies

Heyho, new to the forums, but I’m honestly at an utter loss at this point and figured you people are my best bet, so sorry if posting wrong, and for the unformatted long post!
The car in question would be a Wartburg 1.3 (so technically an MK2 Polo/Golf, with a slightly different camshaft boosting power by 4 horsepower!) and a Weber 34TLA (Identical to a 32, bar the venturi being bigger by a bit)carb! Hasn’t run for half a year before I bought it, but using your helpful forums and some previous mechanical knowledge from my Lada ownerships, I managed to fix the auto-choke, runs and starts great when cold!
I still have a vac leak somewhere, as it doesn’t really react to adjusting screws all that much (replaced rubber flange, rebuilt carb, new seals everywhere, new membranes for the auto-choke pulldown and the squirter for hard acceleration), but it idles when warm at least too now! There are two problems I’m facing, one of them being, does anybody have any idea where else could I be leaking vac from, as spraying brake clean around doesn’t impact RPM at all, at this point my only guess would be the intake manifold’s gasket itself!
The main issue though, is that once it gets fully up to temperature, having driven a bit and fully hot, it seems to have absolutely no power, and on small or large amounts of throttle it makes an unholy noise (attached)!
100 octane fuel, and among the other things I already mentioned, I have replaced the fuel pump with a new mechanical pierburg, new fuel lines, new ignition leads, spark plugs, rotor, distributor cap, the vac advance does have correct vacuum with tests, but just incase I have plugged every single vac line from the carb up (and if it IS pre-detonation, the advance being on would make it worse?) Checked the timing, it is off by like half a tooth, but that shouldn’t impact it to that level (and then also would impact it when cold?) Distributor is aligned to the place where it is marked together from by the factory, but retarding it as much as possible so that it barely doesn’t die on idle, it still does it, and while advancing it smoothes idle out, it makes the effect a lot worse.
I am assuming it is to do with the vac leak and running lean when too hot, could also be a serious carb issue still and would need another rebuild/re-adjustment, as fully screwing in the CO screw doesn’t stall the car down (it does however make it steam like crazy and run even leaner, so having extra fuel in from somewhere should even be beneficial at this point?)
Or could it be the Hall effect sensor being bad and only coming out when too hot? Maybe the new fuel pump doesn’t deliver enough fuel when hot, as new parts tend to not be of best quality? (I did go through like 4 pierburg pumps on my Lada before suddenly one of them worked)

  • Replies 1
  • Views 280
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Author

Welp, update if someone is curious, after painstakingly rebuilding the carb 3-4 times, going through everything the same amount, it now is perfect on responding to throttle, reacts to adjustments on the screws, vac leaks completely gone. Re-plugged all vacuum lines, everything works (cold-hot air, vac advance), covered the radiator a bit to help it with the cold further. Still pings when fully hot after a higher speed run for like 4-5 minutes when stationary, and randomly has the idle drop like 400-500, before it returns to normal and working without pinging.

Create an account or sign in to comment

Recently Browsing 0

  • No registered users viewing this page.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.