Haven’t got much time today, guitar practice this morning and lesson this afternoon. But I snuck in an hour to check the plug wires and cap again. Used a 10x loupe on the cap, absolutely clean, no cracks, no traces, no burned terminals inside.
The wires are new copper core and even though they were lighting up the plug tester, I checked then for continuity with a DMM. Found one that was open and when I pulled it from the cap the brass had sooty green corrosion on it. This was the type that has the barb in the center that you poke into the center of the wire to make contact and squeeze the two barbs on the side in to hold it in place. I cleaned it in Tarn-X which is my favorite way of cleaning brass, then cut back an eighth of an inch to assure clean core and soldered the center lead just to make sure. All the rest of the wires checked out fine. Even though it seemed totally illogical that this could be the culprit, I at least, actually found something that was out of kilter. And it did go along with a lot of the opinions that it’s ignition, which I still can’t quite buy.
She started first turn over with a 1/4 choke, one pump on the pedal then off and idled nice and smooth and strong about 700-800 rpms. A couple of minute warm up and I took it for a ride around the block and it was running just beautiful. The temp was coming up to about normal so I turned out on to the highway. I got about a hundred yards down the road and I thought I’d run out of gas. Down shifted, pulled the choke out and started pumping the gas, found a wide spot and swung a U turn and full throttled it back to the house in second gear with the choke out. When I pulled into the garage it was idling about normal a little high but the choke was pulled out more than half way. I pushed in the choke and she idled down and died.
I popped the bonnet and the AC filter/sediment bowl in front of the carb was full. I noticed that the carb base was sweating quite profusely, humidity today is only 63%, dp is 61 and temp is 74. The carb base was as cold as ice when I touched it. I noticed a couple of weeks ago when I pulled the ‘B’ apart to check the innards that the cast iron base had a lot of surface rust forming in the venturi, this struck me as odd because I had cleaned it meticulously with wire brushes when I had last rebuilt it a year or so ago. Not the outside, just the inside of the throat. From my flying days before the Bendix fuel injection I had a few experiences with carburetor icing. I’m now beginning to wonder if I could be having a problem with icing, a lot of things point to that.
Okey dokey, we can scratch that one off the list!!! She’s been sitting for the half hour or forty-five minutes that I’ve used up composing this trash. The carb base is now warm, as is everything else, just warm, where you can lay your hand on anything on the engine and its just warm to the touch. Started her up as I usually do when she’s warm, that is, with out touching the throttle, she started then immediately died. I half choke and pump it a couple of times, she starts, runs smooth, push in the choke and she dies, pump the pedal a couple of pumps and she catches right up but then dies off, with choke out and idling I slowly feed throttle and she dies. Low speed circuit???? All of that was clean and open last week when I checked it.
So I’m back to the first line, “This one really has me baffled.”
Gotta go work my frustration out by beating on the guitar, get back to this in the late afternoon.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
