I have had my Pagoda now for about eight years. During that time, there have been many improvements and small upgrades made, however, we could never quite get the fuel/ignition right. I have recently relocated to Souther Cal and sought out a new mechanic. I brought the car to him and right away he commented on the slight miss and the idle hunting. I also wanted him to address the (very) hard starting after the car had sat warm for a period (longer than a half hour or so). After talking for a while I brought the car to him and asked him to find out what he could. I wanted to list out what he did to let others know what we learned.
First thing was to replace the brake booster. There was a leak that was not really affecting the brakes, but was hugely affecting the idle performance. Before this I was never able to get it constant. It would be alright for a bit, then not, or I would have to set it high to get a good in-gear idle, on and on...... I was able to source a booster out of K&K.
From there, he found that the distributor had no vacuum advance, the car sometimes had no power from start, but it was not consistent. I was able to source a rebuilt unit from the Benz Dr. and after a few trials and tribulations getting the whole condensor/points/ballast resistor/coil set up right (believe me, it is important to have them all match). It was up and running.
There were also some adjustments to the FI pump, as the mixture was not right - read that as a tweak to the main rack.
Along the way he found that the steering column coupler was completely shot. This has two plastic bushings that had plain disintegrated. There were also a few missing pieces that he replaced. The end result was steering that felt tight and true.
Another very positive side effect was the transmission now shifts smooth and clean, before there would be intermittent hard shifts, and changing shift points.
It was not cheap, but as a good friend put it, it is like coming out of the toy store with the best toy there!
There are still a few things left to do, with the injectors rising to the top of the list.
But for those in SoCal that see PAGODA 1 with the guy with the big grin, you will know why.
