Short story: After a few tanks of gas idling in the driveway, and a about a dozen short spins around the neighborhood, finally decided to take my '53 235 for its maiden voyage into town.
She ran like a champ!
Over two days, I put about 100 miles on her: lots of stops for shopping, started every time. Loving life. Even hit 55mph on the highway on the way back from the dump (with a tailwind).
Feeling bold, I decided it was time to take my lady for ride on day 3 -- rather than have her sit by her phone ready to come meet me with a tow strap.
Eagerly, (perhaps too eagerly?) we jumped in, fired her up (sounded great), didn't let her warm up like usual, and backed out of the driveway. Made it 200 ft down the road. Then she died.
She turns over, but only stays running if I'm almost flooring it, and only then she has a loping along, forcefully belching black exhaust. Forget getting her into gear.
My lady walks back to the house for our other vehicle and tow strap (she's a good woman).
Figuring it was flooded, I let it sit overnight in the driveway. Same symptoms the next day.
Noticing my inline fuel filter just before the carb was full, rather than half-full like usual, I thought maybe there was too much fuel gong in. I tried pinching off the gas line going into the pump to reduce gas intake. Same symptoms.
I had a spare set of plugs on hand, swapped them out. Same symptoms.
(A note on the plugs: after turning over for less than a minute (again almost flooring it to keep her alive) the plugs were surprisingly sooty. Well 3 of them were sooty, 1 looked good and 2 were wet with fuel / maybe oil.)
So, still working on the flooded theory, I left the plugs out last night and am going back to it this afternoon.
Any thoughts on what else I should / could be checking?
Last edited by ThreeTree53; 06/15/2021 7:38 PM.
