EA81 loosing power

[subieman]

My 84 hatchback is loosing power, more and more everyday. Hills I used to be able to climb at 60mph are now 45mph. Cap and rotor, plugs and wires are 1 year old. No brakes are dragging. All the hoses are hooked up and not cracked.

 

Would some carb cleaner help? Maybe a new fuel filter? I'm looking for some suggestions.

 

Car has 138k miles.

 

Thanks in advance :-)

[Russ Hill]

Could be fuel filter. It could also be the exhaust, If it's getting restricted it will rob power.

[Tom63050]

Yeah, stick on a new fuel filter (and keep a spare in the glove box). On carbed cars they can plug up every 10-15K miles. This will at least eliminate this as the problem, if no improvement is seen. This is probably not the problem though, as in my experience a carburetor fuel filter will work fine until it goes out. You will probably get a few miles of bad running, then it dies.

 

Pour a can of fuel sysyem cleaner into the as tank too. Might as well try all the easy/cheap fixes first. Get the kind that cleans the carb/fuel injectors, valves and combustion chamber. I use this stuff once a year. Often there's a very noticable difference, depending on how clogged up the system is.

 

A plugged cat could be the problem. You could cut off the pipe directly behind the cat, and then ream the cat out a bit with a hole saw, to improve flow through it. Then start the car with the cut pipe still not connected, to blow out the particles in the cat. Only do this if you don't have to worry about passing emissions, of course. Otherwise get a new high-flow cat put on. On my 86 MR2 I recently put on a new cat, The old one you could barely see thru, even holding it up to the sun! Gas mileage and power went up considerably, and oh yeah it passed emissions.

 

At the risk of insulting, I presume the air filter is fairly new? I once bought a car with 42K miles that had the original air filter still on it. Horrible gas mileage. When I discovered the old air filter, first I cleaned it and got better mileage. Then I replaced it and got much better mileage.

[Caboobaroo]

I can't quite remember but I think there's 2 fuel filters on it. One is located underneath the passenger side near the tank and the other is located on the firewall. I know JonOfScio's 88 hatchback has 2 but I'm not sure on the older ones.....I never replaced the filters in my 83 but I know there was one on the firewall for sure:D

[Tom63050]

Caboo is right, on many of these carbed cars there're two filters. The main one is under the car, by the fuel pump (behind the right rear wheel). The other one is in the engine copmpartment, by the firewall right in front of the driver. This one is technically not there just to be another fuel filter, but is part of the fuel return system.

 

If you have your fuel pump in the engine compartment, it & its filter will be near the firewall right in front of the driver. I think this applies to early 80s subes, like 80 and 81. (Experts please provide more detail.)

[Meeky Moose]

well as far as fuel filters go, my 84' hatch has one under the car by the fuel pump, and also one up under the hood right behind/next to the strut tower..

[subieman]

Thanks for all the suggestion. I'll run some cleaner through the gas and spray some carb cleaner. And see if that helps. If not I'll replace the fuel filters. I hope this is all thats wrong. I'll pull a plug also and see how that looks. Is there anyway to test the exhaust system without pulling it?

 

PS. It's been backfiring a lot latley. Could that have destroyed my cat? And how would I fix the backfiring problem?