I am still battling a similar problem that has been happening since I got her in Feb of this year. I have a 1974 with 212K miles and only drive her about 20 miles a day to/from work. From this thread I am wondering about possible injector weep, but don't want to go off half-cocked.

When I start her up maybe 5% of the time (maybe once or twice every other week), she sputters and has terrible acceleration and pushes out gas-smelling exhaust smoke almost until I get to work. Letting her warm up for 10 minutes or so before getting on the road makes no diff. Once I get up over 2000 RPMs though, it smooths out and runs fine until I slow back down. Then it runs like crap until I suffer up past 2000. No, it does not improve with operating temp or change with outside air temps. She may run perfect getting to work and then when I split for lunch she runs horribly. Then when I go home at the end of the day she may run fine again.

I always run Chevron mid-grade gas and checked and cleaned the contact points on the cap/rotor (appear new) and trigger points and the plugs and wires are new. I found the wire that goes from the distributor to the trigger points had chaffed and was possibly shorting on the valve cover, but replacing it didn't change things... Oh, I get rotten mileage (9-10 MPG!) but guess that is about par.

Most of the time she runs like a champ, but when it doesn't I just want to junk her! But because it happens so infrequntly, I just don't feel like taking it to a mechanic cuz I don't think it will be mis-behaving when I get her there.

Ideas?? What else can I check before I drop her on a shop?

Frustrated In Seattle
(Scott)