kickdown cable on a chevy 350?

[klwebb]

okay, my 1971 c10 w a 350/350 is finally running! sorta. it starts up, runs fine, but isnt responding like it should when im on the gas? if im slowly accelerating and then punch the gas it sputters and dies, but if i slowly accelerate until its on the floor its fine but still doesnt go as quick as it should if that makes sense? i have the kickdown cable installed (mostly) and while it was parked i tried punching the gas and it didnt die, but i had a friend say that the kickdown couldnt be the reason for that. any tips and advice would be awesome. im a 16 year old girl and no one around me knows much about my truck

[michael bustamante]

do you have the vacuum line hooked up on the tranny?

[VetteVet]

The two most common reasons for your symptoms are the accelerator pump in the carburetor is bad or out of adjustment, or the ignition timing is off.

Pull the air cleaner off while the engine is off and climb up where you can look down the carb throat, then manually work the throttle and watch for two real good streams of gas to go down into the manifold. If you see a trickle or nothing then the accelerator pump is bad, or the rod for it is out of adjustment.

Loosen the distributor hold down clamp just enough to turn the distributor and turn it clockwise just a small amount while the engine is running and the engine will speed up.
It should perform better, if the timing was too retarded. If you have a timing light you can set the timing where it should be. Probably about 10* BTDC .

If neither of these help you may have a badly worn timing chain and that will also cause acceleration problems.

[VetteVet]

Originally Posted by michael bustamante

do you have the vacuum line hooked up on the tranny?

I don't think that is the problem because the transmission would not upshift until the truck was going about 50 MPH . TH 350 or 400.
She might have a vacuum leak on the distributor advance or at the manifold or carburetor. also a brake booster diaphragm.

[davepl]

Really sounds more like the accelerator pump in the carb than anything. If you had a bad (leaky) vacuum modulator it'd still likely not cause THAT big of a vacuum leak, and you usually wind up sucking fluid in and getting smoke out the tailpipe. So I'd still check for carb squirters.