I’ve got an ‘86 245, with a regular B230F. A couple weeks ago, I was fooling with the ignition timing in an effort to get my NOx down for emissions retesting. I was just trying to retard it a bit, as I had read about in other posts on this site. I expected the car to run poorly, but I didn’t have any good idea about just how bad it would be. I was barely able to drive it down to the inspection station because it had almost no power at all. Ironically, my government-run inspection facility just waived my emissions test when I got there because the car ran so badly. Basically, the car was so messed up that they took pity on me and just let me pass. So I met my legal obligations, but now I’m left with a car that I can’t really drive any where. I have readjusted the timing to get it back in spec where it was, but the car is still running like crap. My guess is that something else was affected when I was messing around with the distributor.

So these are the symptoms…

First of all, it idles pretty rough, even when it’s warm. I doubt any old 240s idle really nicely given the way the motor mounts are designed, but I'm talking about some serious shaking. Probably about .75" of movement back and forth at the oil fill cap. It smooths out above 1500 rpm or so. But rough idle isn’t my biggest concern now.

The main problem is that it seems to be flooding… I don’t know how else to describe it. If the throttle is applied quickly, the engine will begin to stall until the throttle is released. It will die if you don’t immediately release the throttle. In the engine bay, if I open the throttle quickly a few times in a row, the engine will almost die each time and then pick back up to regular idle. This is followed by a very strong smell of gas in the engine bay. The engine will run fine as long as you take the speed up really slowly and without any load (parked and out of gear).

In driving this means the car will stall if there are any sudden moves. I have to come off the clutch really really slowly in order not to stall. About a quarter-inch of pedal depression gives me the most power. More pressure than that, and it starts to jerk from trying to stall (this is what it did for the emissions inspection guy that let me go). Stop signs and red lights are a major pain, because it is very difficult to avoid stalling when starting from a stop.

One last bit of info that might be useful is that when I open the throttle quickly (and get that near-stalling effect) it is accompanied by a very short burst of a faint hissing sound from the throttle/air intake area. That implies that it might be vacuum related, and it might be, but I looked all around for any signs of air or fuel going in or out anywhere, and I couldn’t find any. It could just be that the sound was always there and I never noticed it before.

Have any ideas? What should I be looking for? What might I have damaged when getting the distributor to turn (it was stuck in place without the hold down bolt)? Any severed cruddy wiring harnesses that could cause this problem? I don’t have a lot of experience with troubleshooting engine power problems on this car because this is the first time I’ve had to deal with any. Thanks for all your help…