V6 engines woes....pleas help

I've had this problem with my 85' 2.8 liter V6 for quite some time, and i absolutely cannot figure out whats wrong. If anyone could shed any light on the problem it would be highly appriciated, thanks.

Well, first of all the engine really runs like crap when its cold. Its barely drivable. Anything past half throttle and it sputters and misfires and wont accelerate at all. if you rev the engine up and then dont "catch" it on its way back down toward idle it'll die (makes a manual tranny very hard to drive). and then it seems like theres this spot on the throttle where it does the same thing as above...just misfires a sputters and sags.

After it gets warmed up it almost runs perfectly. There still seems to be this spot on the throttle...I think the time it shows up the worst is at this hill at the end of my street. I'll idle through my neighborhood at about 5mph in second gear then i'll come up to this little incline and i'll start to give it just a little gas to keep it up to speed and it'll just sputter and the truck will acually start to lurch back and forth from the engine trying to stall or whatever its doing. i've tried almost everything i can think of and it just won't run right.

Again, any help would be appriciated, i really want this problem to go away!

More than likely theres some sort of problem with the carberator. Well i say problem but its simply that the carberator for the 2.8L just sucks. I had an '85 S-10 with the v6 but auto trans and had a similar problem. I cant even tell you how many times it stalled on me, especially when I just gave it too much throttle. I hate to tell you but the problem may not be very fixable if it is the same problem I had. Don't take my word on this and get it checked out by a mechanic, one who knows particularly about this engine. But everything you mentioned sounds so similar to my problems when I had the truck. Good luck!

That thought acually occured to me while i was under the hood checking and tweaking everything i could. I would really like to put a holly 390 CFM 4 barrel on there but just cant afford it. The problem with these engines is they were built to be a low emmision engine, so they made all sorts of sacrifices to engine running quality to accomplish that. I did get some of that choke/throttle cleaner that you spray in and let it sit, then start it up and that doesnt seem to make any differance. Think it would do me any good to purchase a rebuild kit for the carb and do that?

Like I said before I would at least talk to a mechanic, personally if you know or have one you trust talk to them. I think my mechanic did that to mine and to no avail. I really don't know what to tell you to do, I hope everything works out for the best.

SOunds like you choke vacuum actuator has gone south on you.

I'll bring it down to napa and have jim look at it..he probably wont be too busy this week anyway. I tried to explain what it was doing to him before and he said it sounded like the timing, but we tweaked that and it didnt seem to help much. I just feel kind of guilty bringing it down there for him to look at and not being able to pay him for his time (working on a 17-year-olds budget) but i guess he wouldn't help me with it if he didn't want to..

I checked both the vacuum break units and both are fine, the primary was a little iffy at first but i removed it and cleaned it up and it seems to work fine now. I really dont think the choke has anything to do with how its running while its warmed up, because i know its opening ok...even if its not closing..i'll work on my cold starts later, right now i just want it to run right when its wamred up.

I had similar problems with a car i used to have so I changed the rotor cap and plug wires and that took care of the problem. It might be a good idea to try it wont cost much and probably havent been changed before try this before sticking tons of money in the carb theory it will not cost you more than $50 .

ya i think ill go ahead and replace the rotor, cap and plug wires. While im at it i might as well spend the little extra to get the sheilded wires and so maybe that'll help with the engine noise i get in my radio. I just started my summer work so i have a small income now....i'll let everyone know how it turns out.