Gremlins?

[ugly2u]

Can you help locate my gremlins?

Driving around town, all of a sudden, the motor shuts off. Trying to restart, sounds like pre detonation. I mess with the choke plates and linkage, and it starts up again. I drive for a mile or so and it shuts off again. It sounded like pre detonation again, until i messed with the choke plates, then it fired up. We drove around the block and parked for a few. After letting it sit for an hour, playing soccer with my kids on the side of the road, we fired it up and drove 15 miles home without incident.

A few days later, I drove it to my mechanic to say WTF! We ran the motor for a few minutes, and it shut off again. Wouldn't start until I messed with the choke again; he said it sounded like the timing was out of whack. We checked it and the timing was on the mark, but the vacuum advance was not doing anything.

Now I have a slight clicking noise, when the motor is running, coming from the driver side. It's a stroked 490, with 1000 miles. Roller rockers, hydraulic lunati, electronic distributor, yada yada..

He thought the motor shut down sounded electrical. I'm not sure what to check. Any ideas? I'm going to check valve lash over the holiday; maybe that's the clicking.

Cheers, thanks for any ideas you can share.

[bobs66440]

I had a similar problem (minus the clicking noise), but it didn't shut off...just ran real bad intermittently. Turned out to be a bad coil. The clicking noise could be a spark plug wire arcing out against a header or something nearby and may not be related. I would eliminate the possibility of ignition problem first because it's relatively simple and cheap. Swap out the ballast resistor if you are using one. It may be getting hot and shutting the car down, then in the time you work on the choke plates, it cools off and runs again.