Hello everyone....fi rst-time Bobcat owner here, a brown 1980 hatch-glasser with 2.3 and about 23K original (believed accurate), bone stock, no A/C, automatic, very nice orig interior. (I learned to drive on my dad's '76 Pinto; it had a 4-spd and was pretty zippy as I recall...)
Have had the car about 3 mos...(before I bought it, story is it sat around for nearly 20 years, was started up once in awhile)...have driven it very little because of poorPOOR acceleration & power. I feel sure this problem is NOT ignition-related. Here's what I've done:
replaced the fuel-tank (original was full of rusty shizod).
replaced the fuel lines, inbound and outbound.
replaced the stock mech pump (with a new mech pump..)
replaced the timing-belt.
I've checked compression, and it's great (i.e. no head gasket probs)
replaced the plug wires (altho' the original ones were fine...)..
repaced ignition coil (just for fun)
had the carb rebuilt (professionally)
repaced fuel-filters multiple times...
Not gonna bother you guys with the long version of the story, but after the car died on a bridge here in NYC, I had had the carb done...and sure enough, bowl was full of bits of rust (remnants of the old crummy tank..). Problem was the old girl ran really badly (again no power)....turned out there was still shizod in the accel pump jet. Carb guy rechecked everything, cleared the jet....meanwhi le we rechecked everything else (timing marks, set to specs, etc...)
Anyways, the car runs and drives now but just has really poor get-up-and-go (No, I am definitely NOT expecting GTO-like acceleration from a Pinto-cat, but she's even challenged to go up hills, unless I kick into low gear...somethi ng's definitely lacking)
I've read on here that bypassing the EGR is a good plan, and my next step will be to check all the vacuum lines, but since it idles very smoothly and doesn't really have a miss or anything, I might be grasping at straws.. Any suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated if you guys have time.
cheers!