A few months back (Novemberish) my 53 started acting up a little. Id warm her up for a good 10-15 minutes before Id drive her anywhere. Under increased load, such as hitting the gas hard or going up hill she would bog down and stutter some. After about a good 30 minutes of running though she would seem to drive beautifully. I adjusted the timing, tune up, etc... I went over to a friends a few weeks back and she decided that she didnt want to be out that day. I made it over there although it wasnt a nice trip. I pulled the plugs and they were a little sooty, so I swapped them out. She seemed to run ok as we left to go to some old car geeks house. About a 1/8th of a mile up a huge hill she stuttered and died. So I backed her down the hill and tinkered a little and finally got her running. We got her back to my friends house and I couldnt get her running again. So on the trailer she went and back to my place.
First off, I swapped for another 6 volt coil. Checked to see if I had power to the positive side of the coil with the ignition on, yes. Checked to see if I had power from the coil to the distributor as I turned it over, yes. New cap, rotor, points (adjusted 0.020), condensor, plug wires and I have 3 sets of spark plugs (gapped properly at 0.35) Ive tried now, cycling through them in case they got fouled. Pulled the wires one at a time and checked each cylinder to make sure I had spark at each cylinder, yup.
Then I compression tested each cylinder with about 110-115 pounds of pressure each (not bad for being 54 years old!). Rebuilt the fuel pump as I believed the old one was leaking into the engine. Gas is puddling a little in the intake manifold, plenty of pressure from the fuel pump to the carb.
I pulled the valve cover off and turned it over until I watched the intake valve on the #1 cylinder (the one at the front) close, then I turned it over another 1/4 turn-ish until the ball (5 deg after TDC) came up on the pointer on the flywheel. I then popped the cap off and checked the rotors orientation and aligned the distributor as close as possible with the #1 plug wire. Not even a pop or sputter.
Ive let it sit with the throttle wide open, no plugs and turned it over like that randomly so it would air out the gas from the cylinders. 3 days later I plugged everything back in and got almost half a sputter for a split second.
So we have fuel, compression and spark which leaves timing. I started out having the dizzy as close to perfect as possible. Flipped the ignition on and started turning it just a few degrees at a time in each direction for a total of about 20 degrees each way. Still nothing, no pop, no sputter, nothing.
The rotation of the plugs on the cap is proper, as well as the firing order, etc... Ive gone through the check list a dozen times now and rechecked everything. Any ideas???
I need help. Thanks, Jeff
