Sooty Plugs

[mikemckay]

After reading the thread on sooty plugs I"m wondering if perhaps this isn't my primary problem also. My A4 has always been unreliable as in I can never predict if it will start or not
First I had fuel problems with water and crud in the Carb then the water pump started leaking then I blew a head gasket. But before I figured out the why the miss I was in trouble shooting mode looking for the hopefully simple solution, so I replaced plugs, plug wires, cap, rotor, electronic ignitor module no points now, all new water and fuel hoses, new Racor fuel filter, rebuilt carb, new gaskets for head r&r and new exhaust from engine to muffler. This engine should be running like a champ but its not. Its hard to start. It cranks good but doesn’t catch fire at half throttle. If you throttle back to dead idle it will start to pop but still doesn’t catch. When it is running it acts like its loaded up and is boggy when you hit the throttle….got to pump it a bit to get it to speed up. My solution is to always have a can of ether handy, once it starts it will run and once it gets warm it will restart without ether if the engine is still warm. I’m heading down to clean plugs and fire it up so I can go for a little sail this afternoon.
I know this engine will start and run without ether, so I guess the next/last step is change the exhaust hose. Or is the soot on the plugs caused from old fuel.

Mike
Ontime
Cal34 #84
Oly-WA

[Don Moyer]

Mike,

Anytime an Atomic 4 starts hard, but then runs OK after it finally starts and warms up, the problem is almost always that the choke is not closing 100%.

Don