Not a Camaro thing, but at least he was haulin' a 1st gen Firebird. My neighbor and I went to a neat cruise Sun. and he towed his trailer queen 1969 Firebird pro gas car there in his trailer. His tow vehicle is a recently purchased Chevy 4x4 truck that's a show rig in it's own right. Has a 1969 427 BBC in it, and should really haul anything easily, but it struggled all the way up and back on mostly flat roads. He said it pinged and was down on power, and I figured it was a timing issue, or bad gas. (maybe both)
Tonight I went over to sort it out, and thought we better pull the cap and rotor to see if the weights were stuck. I had an old 327 once that it happened to, and it acted the same way.
Well when we pulled the air cleaner I took a look at the vacuum advance and couldn't help but laugh. Someone had run the supply hose from the advance to the fresh air inlet to the choke! I had to look twice to be sure my eyes weren't tricking me! Both metered vacuum and manifold vacuum ports were plugged, so I pulled the cap off metered and moved the advance to that port. Acts like a 427 ought to act now, with no pinging or bogging.
I guess someone didn't have the instructions, and was totally guessing at where all the hoses went!

 

Whoever hooked that up was somewhat on the right track, just didn't quite make it there. That "fresh air inlet" on the choke housing is actually a vacuum nipple that pulls air up from the manifold to heat up the choke coil. Might want to check to make sure the gasket for the choke mechanism is in place, and the o-ring between the choke housing and carb body is good, or he'll have a vacuum leak on top of it.

 

Wow. I mean wow. Some people should not be aloowed near tools. My 85 chevy had a roofing nail blocking the rear line on the master cylinder AND they screw the wiring up under the dash so bad that when driving at night I could dim the headlights with the reheostat (spelling). I cut a plug out of another truck and matched color to color, worked fine. I still don't know what they were tryin to accomplish.

 

The previous owner of mine had done a huge hack job all over the car. Non-matching screws all over the place. Some widening up the holes that they were supposed to go in to. Nuts rounded off all over the place. It was a nightmare.

 

From what I determined that inlet wont leak unless you had a bad base gasket leak too. It goes to a point in the manifold that isn't connected to vacuum. Holley instructions say to be sure and NOT close that port off, it must be left open to work.

 

Talk about bad wiring... my camaro was in a shop of horrors before i owned it... i just purchased a new painless system because the terrible wiring in the car was no longer tollerable.... wire nuts and crimp connectors EVERYWHERE...


pretty excited to put the painless system in. push type fuses!!!! YAY


But unfortunatly alot of old cars end up in the hands of butchers

 

that was my camaro. had a Q jet with a E choke and a black box???? my fuel guage was jacked WAY past F ran like hell. found a holley in my barn cleaned it up put it in. it was a manual choke i started my car after. ran better and my fuel guage worked after. i was like......wat...... i fixed a mess of problems that day with a new carb........

 

I just helped my buddy install a EZ wiring harness in his Austin gasser and it was amazingly simple! Only one thing I would reccommend and that's once you've laid it all out and determined where each wire goes, then pull it back and wrap the harnesses with black electrical tape to give it a finished/factry look.
I've seen so many cars at car shows that owners installed a Painless or EZ system in, but never finished it with wrap, just wire ties the whole length. It looks really tacky.

 

In the box, painless put a sample of wrap called powerbraid looks really nice. im not putting hte harness in till next weekend, (hate when a good work day (sunday) gets ruined with running errands). But since i got some time i think im going to order it tomorrow.