The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Truck smokes after sitting for a month and a half

Hi guys,

There's likely a simple explanation to my concern, but I am obviously new to old vehicles, so I have to ask.

I stopped driving my truck in November, and stored it in a garage. Meant to take it back out, fill it, and put in stabilizer, but the slave cylinder crapped out, so now I have no clutch, again. So the truck is stuck in the garage until I get the new cylinder. I go over there every month or more to start it, to keep things lubed up. I've been noticing that it smokes now, when it never did before when I was driving it regularily. The smoke is dark gray, and it smells like it's running really rich. Is this possibly because I have to pump the crap out of it to get it started, and it's flooded? Or is it old fuel? Or is it because my piston rings have dried out and it's burning some oil? I let it run for a while, but it fogged up the garage and made my eyes sting, so I shut it off. It still sounds really good, but is difficult to start.

It sounds like it is running really rich, not burning oil. Probably something has gone wrong in the carburetor.

Fire it, tap the float bowl with something fairly light. Maybe the float stuck from sitting. Get some stabilizer add some fresh gas.

Hy Adam61, firstly NEVER run a vehicle in a non vented area, especially when you are in there with it!!! Fuel will evaporate from the carb over time, and our current fuel formulations are even more likely to do so, that is why it's hard to start, there's no fuel in the carb when you try to start it. Over chocking can cause smoke, the choke is only needed to start the engine, then push it in as quickly as you can to keep the mixture as close to correct as possible. Oil can run down valve guides and cause smoke on startup. If you don't have stabilizer in your fuel at the moment, I would drain it and replace it with fuel with stabilizer added. My personal opinion about vehicles in storage is, that if you're going to run them occaisionally, let them run until their fully warmed up and "Normalized", otherwise don't bother to run them at all, hope that helps.

Gasoline goes stale these days much faster than it used to. You've probably got a combination of some gum and varnish deposits in the carburetor clogging up some passages, and gas that's already lost most of its lightweight hydrocarbons to evaporation. I once encountered a tank of gas that got so bad I couldn't pour the stuff out on the ground and light it with a match, and the car had only sat idle for a month. When the owner tried to start his freshly-rebuilt engine, the gas simply wouldn't burn. A tank flush and a couple of gallons of fresh gas fixed it. It might be necessary to put a kit in the carb before you get back on the road, and pay particular attention to a good solvent soak and lots of high-pressure compressed air blown through all the drilled passages as you reassemble it.

Next time, try to run the tank bone-dry or close to it before parking the vehicle, and put a heavy dose of Sta-Bil or some other fuel stabilizer in to prevent the gas from getting gummy.
Jerry

Hi, Adam61, with today's fuel you MUST use stabilizer if sitting more than 3 weeks. I drive my truck every saturday from March to October, so in September I start adding stabilizer to the fuel because you never know when the last drive will be. On your start up, if you pump the gas pedal a few times you have raw fuel in the cylinders that washes off the oil and makes smoke.Out here on the wet (west) coast I park the truck with a Full tank of gas to prevent condensation (and rust) from forming in the gas tank, also if possible do not use fuel with alcohol in it as it pulls water out of the air.

3B, I had the garage doors open on both ends! Ha ha, I would have moved it outside but it has no clutch at the moment, so it wont drive. There's hardly a drop of fuel left in the tank, I was thinking of filling it up and adding stabilizer once I can drive it again. But then again, by the time the new slave cylinder shows up, I'll likely have it out of storage and will drive it again.

How come you don't just use a dry clutch on that truck, out of curiosity?

Not an option on that one- - - -the clutch release bellcrank comes in from the passenger's side of the bellhousing, and it would take a major modification of pedal linkage, a bellhousing change, and a bunch of other changes to switch to a manual clutch from the hydraulic setup from the factory.
Jerry

Yeah Jerry's right, I've thought about changing it before. It has been modified a bit however. The transmission and bellhousing arent original, so the clutch fork is now on the drivers side, instead of the pass side, where it should be. The slave is now mounted to a piece of steel strut bolted to the truck's frame. Worked great until the seals in the slave blew out.