Here's the deal. Someone ran into the back of me today, almost lost another 7 and luckily only my bumper was attacked. After going through all the paperwork and mess, I drove the car back home. Everything ran fine. A little later I decided to go off somewhere and the car ran great for about 10 minutes. Then.....after I start moving from a stoplight, the car stutters, then shuts off. I started it back up and it idled fine, but everytime I'd try to move, the car would try to cut off unless I totally gassed it. So the take offs are total crap. After I get up to about 4k rpm's, everything is running fine again, but when it's below that theres only hope that the car won't cut off. I replaced the fuel filter, the spark plug wires and put some fuel cleaner in the tank. I did't replace the spark plugs because no one that was open around this area carries NGKs, and I'd have to order them. Anyway, the car is a stock '80 with federal emissions (not that california mess). Any help would be super greatly appreciated.

 

I'd say your exhaust got clogged up somehow for the jolt.

 

How would I know if the system was clogged without taking it apart? I was getting ready to put a new exhaust system on the car anyway. Maybe now I have a good reason to do that

 

How old are your cats?



I'm going with Directfreak's theory. Replace the exhaust, since you wanted to anyway.



J

 

There are not any cats on the car, there's a heat exchanger and and thermal reactor. As far as I know those are still the original, they were on it when I bought it.

 

So it can't be a clogged cat then . . . next thing, I would check the entire fuel system. What exactly it could be I don't know. Definitely not ignition problem though. Sounds more like fuel starvation.



J

 

I checked the carb and its getting plenty of fuel. When I was out checking, there didn't much air coming out the muffler. I held my hands over both outlets and it sounded and felt like no back pressure building up. Should there be a lot of air coming out? I've visually checked the exhaust from the muffler up to the thermal reactor and I didn't see anything wrong.

 

put this on it!

 

There should certainly be a fair bit of air coming out.



Something is amiss with the exhaust. Weird though since you don't have cats.



J

 

If I get one of those racingbeat exhausts, which should I get? The street port or the regular high performance system. My engine is not ported if that has anything to do with it.