1975 1.8 on twin carbs running poorly Options

[dt4]

My car is now registered over in the UK so I can enjoy it at long last, I took it out today for the first time other than the short drive to the MOT centre last month

It drove OK to a point but I noticed it was very slow to respond once in 4th gear, it felt very flat and not at all keen to pick up speed
If I shifted from 3rd to 4th at around 30mph / 3500rpm it was sluggish and a just over 30mph in 4th it felt like it was in the wrong gear and needed to down shift back to 3rd

on the hills it soon ran out of grunt and I was having to down shift from 4th to 3rd and even 2nd to get it to rev again and build speed
Setting off on a hill I had to really increase revs in 1st before shifting into 2nd otherwise it would bog down and feel like it was stalling

thoughts:
fuel?
timing?
other?

thank you
David

[Gint]

I corrected by statement about #1 position in my last post. I added this: "on the distributor cap position" to this line:

With the engine on #1 cyl TDC, the rotor should be pointing roughly at the physical location of #1 cylinder on the distributor cap position provided the dizzy is not 180 degrees out.

Which is roughly 11 o'clock as pointed out earlier in the thread.


I put the car in 5th gear, jack under the control arm of one of the rear wheels ( I use the driver wheel), take the e-brake off, remove the distributor cap and turn that wheel in the forward rotation direction while observing the rotor position until it points to the physical location of #1 cylinder on the distributor cap. That should be it. To truly check, the easiest way is to remove the valve cover and check if both intake and exhaust valves for #1 are closed. This is the first stage required to perform a valve adjustment anyway, so if you're intending to do your own maintenance, it's something you should get used to doing.

Do not use a chopstick down the spark plug hole to check #1 cylinder. Search this forum for that. LOL

If it were me, I'd simply pull the idle jets and clean them out. Then I'd take this car for a drive. Sounds like it's been dormant for a long time. Idle jets get plugged up when sitting, but carb'd 914s generally will maintain carb settings if driven regularly enough. Get it nice and warm, and then drive the $hit out of it. Italian tune up as it were. Then see if things straighten out somewhat. If not, time for a full tune, carb clean/rebuild and a valve adjustment. Which you are probably going to want to do pretty soon anyway if your ready to drive the car again.

Looks great BTW!