My son and I took the wagon out yesterday to chase a few deer in the hills. We covered a lot of ground on old back roads, maybe 80 or so miles.
The wagon ran perfect over hill and dale, through mud, rocks, creeks, and down the highway back home. I let my son (12) drive about half of that, he'd never driven a car before... He got the hang of the clutch in a jiffy, and drove me around in style
A couple of hours after we got home, I decided to look under the hood, to check the oil and see if anything obvious needed attention.
First thing I noticed, was that the bolt that holds down the distributor timing was loose. I could move the distributor back and forth a little bit, so I fired it up to see where it ran best. When I touched the distributor with it running, it shocked the bejezzers out of me, my arm was numb for an hour...
After that, it started running a little rough, and didn't want to idle. It stalled out a few times, and then wouldn't start at all. I pulled the #1 spark plug, and found no spark at all. Ran out of time to troubleshoot, so I'm not sure what happened.
I did look over the wires to the distributor and coil. Looked inside the cap, the cap and rotor look good and the condenser wires look fine too. The carb is getting fuel, I can see it squirt.
I'm assuming it is the coil, the condenser, or the points. I'm sure they could all stand replacing, but what is odd is how it quit so suddenly.
Thoughts?
Also, I noticed that there is quite a bit of slack in the distributor, in that I can rotate the rotor back and forth about a half inch... How much is acceptable? I'm not familiar with these distributors, and where the wear happens between the rotor and the oil pump. It seems that the dominoes are stacking up... One thing leads to another, and before I know it, I'll have the engine out and torn down for a rebuild. :roll: I'm hoping to get a few thousand miles out of it before hand though, so I'd like to get it running again on the cheap.
Pete
The wagon ran perfect over hill and dale, through mud, rocks, creeks, and down the highway back home. I let my son (12) drive about half of that, he'd never driven a car before... He got the hang of the clutch in a jiffy, and drove me around in style
A couple of hours after we got home, I decided to look under the hood, to check the oil and see if anything obvious needed attention.
First thing I noticed, was that the bolt that holds down the distributor timing was loose. I could move the distributor back and forth a little bit, so I fired it up to see where it ran best. When I touched the distributor with it running, it shocked the bejezzers out of me, my arm was numb for an hour...
After that, it started running a little rough, and didn't want to idle. It stalled out a few times, and then wouldn't start at all. I pulled the #1 spark plug, and found no spark at all. Ran out of time to troubleshoot, so I'm not sure what happened.
I did look over the wires to the distributor and coil. Looked inside the cap, the cap and rotor look good and the condenser wires look fine too. The carb is getting fuel, I can see it squirt.
I'm assuming it is the coil, the condenser, or the points. I'm sure they could all stand replacing, but what is odd is how it quit so suddenly.
Thoughts?
Also, I noticed that there is quite a bit of slack in the distributor, in that I can rotate the rotor back and forth about a half inch... How much is acceptable? I'm not familiar with these distributors, and where the wear happens between the rotor and the oil pump. It seems that the dominoes are stacking up... One thing leads to another, and before I know it, I'll have the engine out and torn down for a rebuild. :roll: I'm hoping to get a few thousand miles out of it before hand though, so I'd like to get it running again on the cheap.
Pete