Hey all,
I've negelected my 300K and it's punishing me. Having moved on to modern EFI hotrods my stock carbureted ram engine is throwing a hissy fit and punishing me. Nearly two years ago I had a brake failure and left it in the garage. It's started once every six months or so just because... but now that I decided it's time to go through the brakes it wont start. Here's where I am... All fuel evaporated out of the carbs and I used an entire can of spray start to get the fuel pump to bring the ancient gas (can you call it gas these days?) up to the carbs but no luck. I figured the 22 year old pump had dry rotted. I rigged an old Gumout and Kit to hang IV style to feed fresh fuel into the carbs to start it. One good backfire, an exploded muffler somewhere along the way but no run. The fuel pump did finally pull some of the fresh ten gallons I eventually put in the tank so I reconnected the fuel line. Confirmed spark at the plug end of the wires.. nice bluish spark (it's a mopar electronic ignition kit been on there since 1992 ( about the last time the car was tuned). Started pulling plugs and nasty, dark, raw fuel smelling and a few with some carbon and a little oil buildup. Ok.. simple enough .. time for plugs I thought. Yeah right... this car's pissed at all the other toys I've added to the garage and she's being a bitch. All new plugs go in ( I forgot what a chore that is with the rams on top) and guess what... no start... doesn't even sound like it's wanting to. Yep... checked fuel and spark again.. still there. The starter is cranking at full speed... almost too fast. Like there's no compression. But not that sound that an engine makes with a bad timing chain if you know what I mean. So it's a double roller chain in there anyway. I thought If the mechanical advance had stuck in the distributor that might be it but no... it would be stuck in advance if that were the case. I know how an engine sounds when it's got too much advance when you try to start it and this isn't it. A buddy suggested a few valves might be stuck from running on the crappy gas left in the tank over the last few years. Hmm... but all the valves? I can see the engine starting, running crappy and maybe bending a few valves in the process but again... this engine is cranking at full speed and doesn't even sound close. Another friend though it's been running so rich and was so flooded that I washed all the oil from the rings and now there's not enough compression to kick it over. It was a worn , beat on engine in the car but it ran pretty good. Last time it ran it warmed up to temp.. maybe 15 minutes, a few blips of the throttle to blow the carbon out of my garage and into the neighbors yard and I shut it down with no hint of anything being wrong. Any thoughts? I know I'm overlooking something. Sigh...
Mike Laiserin