losing power

[polo-vixen]

I dont know quite how to put this, the car seem to losing power from some were at the moment.

She used to be quiet quick, for a 1.3 now seems like a bus, and she seem to idle at just over 1000rpm, which dnt seem right to me

She is eating the petrol like there is no tomorrow, i dnt know if this make any sense to anyone,

I posted this on porka if anyone on here would be any help.

[ZOMBIE]

Have a look on porka- think your mixtures gone to pot and its running flat, unless youve just been ragging the b*******s off it which im sure you havent!!?

[polo-vixen]

when u say mixture gone to pot, can some explain, and yea she get ragged but once ina blue moon kinda

she has only done 80,000 so cnt see y it running s**t

[ZOMBIE]

I think that its probably running rich- over fuelling, sounds like it:- if its idling to fast. Get it cripton tuned, it'l be worth it- I know those pierburgs need a bit of maintenance from time to time but can be got to run really well when tuned right

[polo-vixen]

how much money we talking for that

x

[ZOMBIE]

They guy near me used to charge £15 but I think hes gone up now- around this price anyway.

[Tahrey1043]

would it be worth simply fitting a manual choke for that?

(thats basically what he's on about - it's acting as if the choke's out all the time... course the mk2 has an auto choke... but it dont always work right and leads to a need for occasional tune ups like this)

[mk2matt]

could be air leak too from the carb mounting so needs more fuel to idle
i had this prob on an other polo i had before i change the mounting

[mk2keel]

ideally the car should idle between 800 and 1200 revs (hence the notches on the speedo) so 1000 revs is about right.

[polo-vixen]

yeap but im talking seriouly eating the petrol, and i mean badly and no i aint ragging her about, im being gentle on me beast

[GroovyCarrot]

Idle should be 900 +/- 50rpm iirc. If your idle point has just suddenly changed (this is idle once the engine is fully warm, isn't it?) then I'd suggest your carb needs readjusting. They do bugger up for no apparent reason, such is the nature of the old pierburgs and this is why everyone moves to webers (or fuel injection) sooner or later. The bad news is that you barely stand a chance of tuning your carb properly yourself, but the good news is that a decent mechanic will spend 10 minutes setting it up and won't charge much for it, especially if they're doing another job on the car so it's not a hassle to do it. Mine didn't charge a penny to tune my carb and set up ignition timing, and it made a huge amount of difference, fuel economy rose from around 35mpg to 40mpg and above and the car now runs a lot smoother.

[Tahrey1043]

Consistently sitting over 1000rpm is a bad sign - closer to the "800" part of "800 to 1200" is better. The fast idle should only be just after starting or on cold days. Generally the lower it is without chugging or stalling out, the better

(s'how i know the astra's warmed up.. it idles at all of 700rpm... when cold it prefers to hover uncertainly about 1500-1800 & it uses a similar singlepoint system to the mk3, which as far as i know doesnt behave a million miles away from an autochoke carb.. just it doesnt often go out of whack!)