Engine trouble, Dies at idle Options

[trojanhorsepower]

All,
I have been enjoying my car but have a recurring issue.
Starts great
Runs fine for maybe 20 min
Starts to once in a while act like it turned off for just a 1/2 sec then comes back on - causing the car to lurch and the shifter to jump
After about 30 or 40 min the car dies if stopped and allowed to idle. It just drops off spools down to nothing,
It restarts if you hold the gas peddle all the way down. Sometime when it restarts it is weak, then it goes fine.
As long as the car is in gear and moving it does not die.
It will continue to do this until I get home. If I am coordinated enough I can shift into neutral, work the brake with my left foot and keep the RPMs up a bit with my left and it seems fine (no stumbling or trying to die at higher RPMs) but if I come to a light, stop and let it idle it will just idle down to nothing.
Sometimes when I get home it will idle fine until I turn it off. Other times it just dies.


Seems to pull great all through the range
Always restarts

Any ideas where to start?

Thanks

Peter

[BillC]

Hopefully this is just a silly question, but what cam is in your engine? Since it's a 2056, it's been rebuilt (obviously), so they could have changed the cam.

Your symptoms sound a lot like what I was chasing on my car when I was first trying to get it running again -- it would run fairly well at higher RPMS, but it would just wind down and die at idle. In my case, the rebuilder put a too-aggressive cam in the engine that isn't really compatible with D-Jet.

Do you have a vacuum gauge? Have you checked your vacuum levels at idle? If so, what do you see when it's running and also when it run downs and dies? If you see fairly low vacuum at idle, like 8-12", and that vacuum goes toward 0 before the engine dies, it might be your cam.

I was finally able to get my engine to idle fairly reliably on D-Jet, but I had to set the idle to 1600 RPM to make that happen.