Thread: 302 trouble

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okay here the deal, my friend's 1978 fairmont has a 302 in it, and its running like crap. today we replaced the soleiniod and starter and a vacuum hose come off. it comes from the drivers-side vavle cover and goes somewhere, which i have no idea where it goes. half the emissions on it aren't even hooked up. it has a 2 barrel carb on a 302 block. help would be great.

Right, it does go to the underside of the aircleaner and has a seperate oil trap filter mounted in the housing. The hose from the passenger side cover goes to the carb base.

Can you define 'running like crap' a bit better?
Is this a prob you hoped to fix with a starter and solenoid, or a problem that cropped up afterwards?

on a car that old many of the vac lines are probably dry rotted, bad and leaking.

as to emmissions stuff...for the most part, removing it won't make the car run better, and may make things worse. many things (the vac lines for example) are more control thatn anything else - so that things only happen once that car is warmed up for example, to messing with it without knowing what you are doing can make a car run terrible. New cars have all this same crap, it's just now computer (elec) controled instead of vac controlled.

chris

be careful what you do, a 78 302 is a very dangerous engine to work on, they have about 10 billion too many vaccum lines. there are ways of fixing this, along with getting a few extra HP be eleminating the smog equipment, might wanna google that though, i dont have all the specifics, but you would have to remove a lot of the vaccum lines that are for the smogpump. there are a few holes you would have to plug on the block, 2 of which are under exhaust valves. once all those steps are accomplished, you need a new belt to remove the smog pump and keep all your other things running, its really not worth the effort though unless you plan on rebuilding the engine, because it requires a topend teardown... and once you teardown the topend, might as well tear it all down... and i'm guessing since your friend drives a 78 fairemont, he cant afford a rebuild at the moment