Truck dies when put in gear

[zacksmith03]

My new crate 350 has an edelbrock carb, hei distributor and a th350 behind it. I just retimed it after the distributor came loose, dont ever use chrome distributor hold downs. Set it to 15 degrees advanced at idle, 900 rpm. The engine runs good at idle in park or neutral, but when put in gear it drops to like 300 rpm or so, just barely enough for it to stay running. It sounds like there's a vacuum leak when it does that, but I can't find one. It sat for a few months after I put it in and was running much better. Anybody know what's going on? Almost got ran into by a semi truck today because of this so I need to fix it 😂

[zacksmith03]

Update: I found a vacuum leak, made sure it won't ever happen again. I'm switching to a holley  truck avenger carb that I had lying around, im thinking it will perform better than the old edelbrock 600. And because i offroad alot and i want my truck to keep running going up inclines and stuff. I have yet to test it out on the road. I'm probably going to try new sparkelators also.

[JohnnyPopper]

sparkelators 

Do those resemble muffler bearings?

[Shifty]

Sparkles, or electric bolts! 

[zacksmith03]

Old timer's way of saying spark plugs

[bd]

You're not an oldtimer unless the ignition coil on your first brand new car was wrapped in wood.   

[zacksmith03]

I figured out that problem by myself and now have a new one but I guess I'll just figure that out myself too as no one one here is being helpful currently

[JohnnyPopper]

Well Zack,

That's part of the exercise; sometimes there is no answer until more data is analyzed. 

The upside is that when you 'figure it out' and share, we benefit from you making us all smarter.

[frotosride]

I figured out that problem by myself and now have a new one but I guess I'll just figure that out myself too as no one one here is being helpful currently

If you follow your post it seems as though you may have fixed your problem..or at least the that's what it would lead one to believe. This truly is a very helpful place but sometimes the old people gotta play.

How to help us hel you...
More infor on your truck, year and modifications. For instance do you have a mechanical pump or electric? Regulator? Completely stock? Ignition modules? Etc....
This will get the ball rolling. Oh and do you still have the stalling in gear issue?

[zacksmith03]

So fixing the vacuum leak helped the drop in rmp when going into gear, but it still drops about 400 rmp which I believe is a bit more than it is supposed to. I think my torque converter i got from craigslist is letting me down there. I put new acdelco plugs in it and swapped to the holley carburetor, and in the process i guess i hit the drivers side header and caused an exhaust leak. There's a very loud tick tick tick noise now, and I can see smoke coming out when its cool. One new set of exhaust gaskets later and its still doing it, so I'm going to try some high temp sealant instead. I'm gonna use my vacuum guage to tune the carburetor and ill also adjust the float height. Its still backfiring through the carburetor sometimes when shut off. Another issue i have had the whole time I've had the truck is that dieselling occurs often when I've got the truck warmed up and stop and shut it off, its annoying and sometimes lights the inside of my carburetor on fire and supposedly is bad in other ways also. My truck is a 1975 chevy k10, 4 inch lift, 33 inch tires. I fully tore it apart and rebuilt it and bought a new crate engine, 260 hp, from jegs performance. Mechanical fuel pump. Sorry for the long essay and for being a bit of a douch earlier, and thanks for any help in advance

[VileZambonie]

Is the vacuum advance hooked to ported or manifold vacuum?

[zacksmith03]

Its hooked to ported vacuum

[zacksmith03]

An update on the truck: I fixed the exhaust leaks and then tried firing it up. It wasn't running too bad but not the best. It was still dieselling, which for those who may not know means that it still keeps turning over and firing after the ignition is turned off from heat, which is exactly how a diesel engine works, no spark plugs. Anyways, I tried richening the fuel/air mixture to no avail. Next, while I was eating lunch, I somehow convinced myself that the distributor was a tooth off and tried fixing that unsuccessfully, and eventually realized I was being stupid and it doesn't even matter because a guy can just turn the cap and do the same thing. Anyways again, ever since I've had the truck it only ever wants to run good when the initial timing is like 40 degrees advanced, which I really don't understand. Shouldn't it blow itself up? It gives it so much more power when you do that. Another thing I should say is that I checked fuel pressure when cranking, it maxes out my 10 psi guage which i assume isn't good. I believe that too much pressure is bad because it overflows the floats and may have something to do with my dieselling issue. This engine will continue 'running' for like 15 seconds after shut off, and even with it in drive and the brake on it just keeps on chugging away lol. Anyways, I got sidetracked. I put the distributor back on, turned my brand new harmonic balancer to about 13 degrees advanced. I then put my distributor cap on so that the #1 plug wire post was lined up with the distributor rotor. Im not a genius but I assumed that this would give me 13 defrees advanced BTDC? I don't know. And then I put my plugs on. 18436572. Checked multiple times. When I tried to start it, it would backfire through the carburetor and never start. So, I took the holley carburetor off, put back on the edelbrock. It did start but wouldn't run hardly at all. I had to advance the timing a lot to get it to even run a little bit. I then limped it to the gas station, filled it up, and then got stranded at Burger King when it wouldn't start for a while. Eventually I advanced the heck out of the timing, I would imagine its back at 35 or 40 degrees again. Ive never ran it down the road like this, but it's never felt better. The power gains were insane, i believe i felt 260 horsepower for the first time tonight since I put that crate engine in the truck. However, when I got home and shut it off, it did the dieselling thing for 15 seconds or so again. All I did after that was make sure that the problem isn't the ignition switch by unplugging the positive from the hei distributor. I would attach some pictures, but I can't figure out how. It says files can't be over 500 kb or whatever. Any help on any of these issues would be greatly appreciated, thanks

[VileZambonie]

Base timing is for your initial setting and by no means dialed in. Sounds like you still need to advance it. Do you have an advance timing light? Set it at 36° at 3,000 RPM. Put your vacuum advance canister on full vacuum source instead and readjust your idle settings.

[JohnnyPopper]

Search for PIXresizer on this forum, download the program. It works very well.

Dieseling can be from gas still entering, along with carbon build up in the combustion chambers. Carbon glows and ignite the fuel.

What is your idle set to? If too high, there's your source of fuel after shutoff.