I have a '91 Sambar with about 60,000km, and it's driven pretty good since I've bought it, and put 15,000km on her. The last few months though it's been acting up and unable to consistently drive above 85-95km. The engine also hesitates to accelerate on gears 4 and 5. Here are some things I've done attempting to fix it: -New sparkplugs and wires -New oil/fuel filters -New distributor cap and rotor -New timing points -Replaced vacuum lines -Have taken the carburetor off, cleaned it with an ultrasonic cleaner, and replaced the gaskets (sadly unable to find a rebuild kit right now) -Checked fuses and replaced any that looked worn -Timing is currently set at 6 degrees at 850 rpms, I've tried playing with advancing the timing and had little results. I'm running out of ideas to try. Was going to adjust my valves, and replace the valve gaskets this weekend so any ideas would be appreciated, I'd love to have her on the road again.
Spent four hours playing with the timing and mixture today and had little results. Also spent some time getting it nice and hot and gave it a seafoam treatment. I suspected that possibly the choke was not set correctly after properly timing the truck with a timing light, and measuring RPMs with a tachometer. Pretty much every setting I set the choke to had little change or made the hesitation worse, so I put the choke back to where it's always been and left it alone. I was reading other threads on the forum and saw somebody with a similar problem had results with bypassing the red and white vacuum control valve, so I did the same. The truck still hesitates but occasionally at wide open throttle it'll finally "catch" and the RPMs will rapidly increase and I'm able to do top speed again. Also used a power probe and the fuel cut off solenoid and upper control solenoid both gave loud clicks.
Hi. Were you able to resolve your hesitation issues? I have a 1992 Sambar 5 speed 4x4, not much fun driving it when i can't get up to speed. Any info will help. Thanks.
Updating thread because I believe it has finally been repaired: After cleaning and replacing carburetor parts, somebody had noticed that the gasket between the intake manifold and the carburetor was not in optimal condition. The gasket was a little flatter than required to properly fill up the groove. We replaced the gasket with a glued together homemade one and noticed a big difference in the acceleration. I ordered a new OEM gasket and also the cardboard gasket that sits on the other side. After replacing both of those gaskets I have not had an acceleration issue repeat itself after a couple weeks of driving around and testing it. It's likely that a *very* small amount of coolant had been leaking past the gasket and mixing with the fuel mixture causing the hesitations. I can't believe such a small detail has caused issues for so long, so just wanted to update for anybody else looking for ideas. There is no part small enough worth overlooking.
I'm currently attempting to diagnose the same exact hesitation issue under acceleration into 4th and 5th... although it is with a '99 TT2 EFI Sambar. Thank you for the details I'll report back after looking at some gaskets.
