Hi All
Well, the weather was irresistible this weekend and I snuck my 55 First series 3100 with a 235 inline out for a fun drive around town after completing my honey do list. After driving her with no issue for about 30 minutes, I brought it home and left it running in the driveway in neutral with the parking break engaged to keep it from rolling down the gentle slope of the driveway. I left it idle for about 3-5 minutes and it quit running on me while I was in the garage fiddling with something about 5 feet away. I went to restart it and it just would not start despite my efforts at pumping the pedal for a few times, various manual choke position, etc. I let her sit for about an hour and I got her to cough and fire up. I immediately drove it into the garage and parked if for the night. next morning, I went in and gave a turn to attempt to start her up. she started right up and I swear she laughed at me.
When it initially died, I thought it may be a vapor lock, but the weather was a cool 50-55 degrees, and the temp gauge was normal, and nothing out of the ordinary was seen with hood up.
I then took the debug path of I am not getting spark or not getting fuel. When I could not start her, I pulled the oil bath cleaner off and manually moved the throttle and saw a whiff of smoke indicating to me that it was getting fuel, so I tried again at that point and it finally started after several more tries and pumps on the accelerator ( this was right after initial stop, not next day)
Obviously, I will not leave it idling for long periods, but I am hoping some of you can suggest some things for me to test, as I suspect this will happen again, perhaps more so as the weather gets warmer in Michigan
the truck is 95% stock to my knowledge, with the engine having an expected 1954 casting number, single barrel carb, oil bath cleaner and otherwise Spartan engine bay, just the way I Like it - a racing friend of mine wonders if it might actually have been an electrical malfunction due to heat in the engine compartment since it was sitting and idling for so long
Any suggestions to test and or theories would be most welcome
Joe
