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Finally picked up another K5.

nad said:
O

  • And as far as the motor goes, I was looking at the carb today, and it has a $hit ton of vacuum crap on it that I'm assuming was for emissions. The smog pump has been unhooked as well as the charcoal canister.


  • Would it be worth trying to eliminate all these vacuum lines that could be possibly causing leaks and power loss? And on top of that, it's a cluster f*** of vac lines all over the place under the hood. The air cleaner barely clears all the garbage.
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I call it black spaghetti. My CA 85 was like this also. Like has been mentioned, you are not finding vacuum going to the distributer because there is likely a pronged plug there instead. You most likely can't find your O2 sensor because it was located in the tube right behind the manifolds, which are now gone and replaced with full length headers. It doesn't suprise me that it was running fine without the O2 sensor in place, when I had all that crap it seemed like it didn't do much anyway. After all, it is still a carb with jets and all.

If I were you I'd completely remove all the california smog stuff and put EVERYTHING in a big box and stuff it in the corner of the garage somewhere. This is what I did with my '85, I put a 406 in and didn't bother putting the CCC carb and distributer back in the truck. Slowly but surely got rid of most of that stuff and modeled my engine compartment after what you would see in a 70's/early 80's truck.
 
andyblack said:
The vacuum advance is the round silver disc thing with the little nipple in the middle of it. It should be on the bottom left of the distributor under the cap.

Edit: Forgot to ask if this is the original '85 distibutor. If it's a pre-HEI ignition it may not have the vacuum advance. I don't know what year they started using it. '78? Not sure.
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I believe it was 1985 and 1986 only that received the CCC cluster f&*k of a system. I was 15 years old when I bought my K5, and had no clue what I was getting myself into buying that year. Whenever it comes up in conversation with friends I always say avoid 85-86 CA trucks.
 
rjfguitar said:
If I were you I'd completely remove all the california smog stuff and put EVERYTHING in a big box and stuff it in the corner of the garage somewhere. This is what I did with my '85, I put a 406 in and didn't bother putting the CCC carb and distributer back in the truck. Slowly but surely got rid of most of that stuff and modeled my engine compartment after what you would see in a 70's/early 80's truck.
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holy sh!t that's what I'm doing. Already got vacuum dizzy, older carb with electric choke, and new vacuum lines/valves. I'm keeping the O2 sensor in but dummy wired.
 
Well I guess that means I'm just gonna start ripping crap off of it and capping all the nipples on the carb. I have two spare qjets laying around but I'm not sure what condition they're in or how to go about hooking them up, as they are totally different models than whats on the truck.

It sounds like this thing has a massive vac leak at the carb so that may be part of the issue.
 
K85 Octane said:
holy sh!t that's what I'm doing. Already got vacuum dizzy, older carb with electric choke, and new vacuum lines/valves. I'm keeping the O2 sensor in but dummy wired.
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I think the smog guys will catch the fact that it's missing the CCC components. I was also thinking that with a bit of luck no one would notice my CCC stuff gone when I planned to still smog my K5. A number of guys told me it would never work, that they know what they are looking for, my only chance was possibly a new guy or some hole in the wall place that might miss it. But, at $50 a pop for a check, I wasn't going to bother and just got plates that don't require smog.

You could try it, but I'm afraid you might spend a lot in smog checks until you find your dummy that misses it.:doah:
 
rjfguitar said:
I think the smog guys will catch the fact that it's missing the CCC components. I was also thinking that with a bit of luck no one would notice my CCC stuff gone when I planned to still smog my K5. A number of guys told me it would never work, that they know what they are looking for, my only chance was possibly a new guy or some hole in the wall place that might miss it. But, at $50 a pop for a check, I wasn't going to bother and just got plates that don't require smog.

You could try it, but I'm afraid you might spend a lot in smog checks until you find your dummy that misses it.:doah:
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Man I would love living in Cali because of the weather, but I'm sure glad I don't have to worry/deal with all that B/S.
 
The Land of Fruits and Nuts. Anytime you have a place with nice weather, there's always way too many people and way too much micro-management. Why is that? Cali will let more people raise/smoke reefer than they will let drive around in a "gross polluter". I don't get it.
 
Well I messed with it some tonight, and accomplished absolutely nothing. I started pulling some vac lines and trying to trace some of it. This carb has a bunch of electronic crap plugged into it too. And there's some harnesses that aren't even plugged in anywhere. When I was messing with it, I probably broke 2 or 3 dry rotted vac lines.

Checked the oil as well, and it's still full, so I don't think I'm burning oil. Makes me wonder if this thing is just running way rich and that's causing the smoke? But still don't understand why it's coming out of the crankcase (through oil cap and PCV and vent).

Anyway, the biggest question I have to ask, is, can I just swap this carb with a more simpler one? Like just a modern Holley with no electronics other than the electric choke wire? Would this be a huge job to swap them? And would it completely eliminate the vacuum and crap?

Here's some pictures, I don't have a damn clue what half of that crap is. Vac lines to all sorts of stuff.

02d64c47.jpg


905c41e7.jpg


Thanks guys, really hoping I can get this thing worked out...
 
Yeah I realize I'm gonna have to swap the carb. And I guess I can just cap all the crap off, or completely remove it once I swap the carb?

I was looking at some Edelbrock carbs, hoping to spend less than that on a carb, but I don't want some used junk that needs a ton of work/tuning either.

Maybe I'll look into reman'd Q-Jets instead of Edelbrocks, because it seems Edelbrocks need spacers and stuff to mount to the factory intake manifold....
 
Also, where is this computer located that controls the carburetor on this CCC setup? I've got suspicions that it's not even hooked up. Unplugging harnesses doesn't seem to affect the way the truck runs at all. It already has a very low RPM, rough idle. Wondering if that's related at all...
 
Very likely it is not hooked up. Once you replace the carb and distributor with older models you should see a big difference.
 
For your low compression street driven motor keep vacuum advance. I tend to like edelbrock intakes and holley carbs, but some like the edelbrock carbs better and intake doesn't really matter, and should work perfect for you. Moms 84 monte with 30k original miles has that computer controlled carb, i kept telling dad to just rip it off but he spent two months trying to get it to run right and it still wont. Horrible design by gm to make them run lean to pass fuel emissions.
 
1.) you will need the vacuum advance dizzy
2.) older carb with no wires but electric choke
3.) computer is behind glove box
4.) my cousins 86 El Camino has the CCC carb and computer, exact same set up. But the motor is a 383, forged pistons, decent lobe cam, intake, and a bunch of other stuff. It was tuned by a local guy and runs like a raped ape with it's ass on fire straight out of hell. I'm talkin burning the tires through the intersection and freeway hauling ass good. The computer carb etc can be made to run good. But, if it wasn't for smog (which it passes) they wouldn't have gone through the trouble.
 
Can I bolt that carb right up to my factory manifold? I'm still thinking this motor is gonna be toast soon, and I don't wanna waste time putting a new manifold on it if I don't have to.
 
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