My 77 CJ7 has run for years without any attention, not that I put any great miles on it. This summer it decided it was going to be difficult, so now I have to remember how a carb works, with very small success.
I took it all apart and cleaned it, and blew out the jets. Put it all back together and tried it, no dice. When I come off of throttle, it dies unless I very carefully feather it down to idle. I’m clueless about what’s wrong, and have run out of dead chickens to wave over the necromantic device.
I think it would be less trouble to pull the engine and put in a spare 4.0L I have on the shelf.
I didn’t but the carb is pretty low-miles. I might have put 500 miles on it in the 10 years since I replaced the carb. I did blow it all out and cleaned out the float bowl. Maybe I missed blowing something out.
Sounds like a vacuum leak if it runs with a wide open throttle, but doesn’t idle. Look at all the hoses attached to the intake manifold below the carb. Also if your brakes feel hard to press it could be a leaking vacuum booster (if it has power brakes).
Usually it’s a missing plug or cracked hose in the vacuum lines. (PCV, distributor advance or brake booster).
Edit: I’m assuming this is a Carter YF/YFA carb.
Vacuum was 19 inches so that seemed ok and I got no stumbles spraying carb cleaner around.
ended up using a mc2100 out of an old Ford pickup in the farms dead car alley and putting a kit in it. Now I have to manually choke it but that’s just one less thing I have to investigate when it craters next time.
So it was the carb I guess, I’m not a big fan of Carters seems like they’re always adjusted to hell when I come across one.