1950-1966 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Okay, so Smeagol, my '67 96 V4 had been doing some strange things lately. Ran bad sometimes, ran okay sometimes. Warm or cold, never Knew if it was going to buck and spit or run fine. Ran bad going to the store, ran okay coming back.
FRICKING WEIRD.
So, I replaced the coil, distributor cap, rotor, rebuilt my carb (Weber 32/36). No love. Tested fuel pump,. No help. Still flaky as hell.
Finally, it ran bad, then ran worse then wouldn't do anything but idle, and just barely. Pushed it into a Burger King (how classy is that?), called AAA and headed home on the flatbed. Poor old Smeagol looked pretty sad getting ferried home like that.
Called in reinforcements. Tom Shipman. The world's best mechanic. Period.
Tom brings a brand new Weber (a replacement from Chip Lamb for a leaky one), a complete distributor and we start testing and tweaking and diagnosing. We check compression, reset timing. Nope. Then we install his new Weber. Nope, not the carb. Then we stick in his distributor. Starts and runs perfect.
What the hell???
We pore over my distributor - everything is perfect. Vacuum advance: check, centrifugal advance: check. Points look good and set right: check. Then we decide to change out the condenser.
Bingo. Starts and runs perfect.
Moral of the story? Don't believe all the morons who tell you the condenser either works or it doesn't. It can be TOTALLY flaky. The car can run great, then rotten, then great again. Acts like it's out of fuel, out of spark or both or neither.
That settles it. I'm putting in my HotSpark at the first opportunity.
posted by 24.255.236...
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