RE: Contaminated Fuel Issue?

[Butch Edison <waedison@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I got lucky. After changing fuel and filter, the car still was acting
up. I bought an Edlebrock carb kit, laid it carefully out on my workbench,
felt my eyes glaze over looking at all those teeny parts. About that time,
the guy who built my shop stopped by. He's out of cars now, but raced Mopars
for 20 or so years. He says "let's go for a ride". We do and he says he
thinks it's the timing. I told him I'd set the timing to the service manual
spec, but he has me pull over, times the car by ear, and I burn out for a
good 50 feet. Problem solved.

Thinking this over, had he not stopped by, I would have cleaned and rebuilt
the carb and still had the same problem. At that point I would have put in
my old single point distributor and the car would have run fine. BUT I would
have not actually understood or solved the problem (if that makes any darned
sense). So, what I'm thinking now is to throw the timing light on it and see
exactly WHERE the total timing is. From what I've read on the forum, if the
correct timing is somewhere in the 30(+) btdc range, then do you think the
cam in the engine has some timing set into it already? From the little I
know, that is what I'd presume at this point. 

Your thoughts are always appreciated and I DO thank you for the responses. 
/Butch/Ferndale, WA

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Lennemann [mailto:pjlenn@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 4:26 PM
To: 1962to1965mopars@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Contaminated Fuel Issue?


Have you used the ethanol blend before?  If not, is your tank "vintage", 
or new?  Let me relate a story that happened to me years ago when 
ethanol blends were brand new.  
I had a company car and filled it up with 10% ethanol blend.  I drove @ 
40 miles when the car started running bad.  To make a long story short 
the sock filter in the tank was plugged solid with gunk that had been 
stripped loose from the gas station's storage tank by the ethanol.  They 
had put it in a tank that had been used for regular leaded gas for 
years.
I use the ethanol blend in my 63 but it has a new tank so no build up of 
"varnish" etc.  I've never had any trouble with it.  

Paul L.
'63 Sport Fury
440/727
http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/ml-lennemann63.html

waedison@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I did some adjustment on the throttle kickdown linkage on the 
> torqueflite on my 64 Sport Fury 383, 4/bbl, thought I'd take it out for 
> a test drive. Fuel gauge was on empty, not something I normally let 
> happen, and had no sta-bil in it, again something I don't normally let 
> happen. Put in 10 gallons of what passes for high-test and hit the road. 
> As soon as I kicked it to test the passing gear, the car started 
> popping, backfiring, trying to stall. I thought, well, if there is some 
> water in the fuel, I'll "drive it out". That actually seemed to work. 
> After a few minutes, the car ran smoothly through some foot brake 
> burnouts, pedal to the metal to about 70 mph. Then it started having 
> problems again and they did not go away. The backfiring and sluggish 
> acceleration continue. 
> 
> 
> 
> I thought about fuel and the distributor as possible causes, as I'd 
> recently changed out my single point for a dual point distributor, 
> provided by a good friend on the forum. I had not driven the car with 
> the new distributor, but had hand-revved it extensively in the shop and 
> it seemed to be fine....but it wasn't under load. 
> 
> 
> 
> I decided to start with contaminated fuel. Although in a heated garage, 
> maybe enough condensation developed in the tank to create a problem. Or 
> maybe with there being so little fuel in the tank, when I hit it with 
> the alcohol-enhanced gas we have to use here during the winter, the 
> alcohol kicked some crud loose in the bottom of the tank. Or just 
> maybe....I got a bad slug of gas from the station. Anyway, I got a new 
> fuel filter and proceded to siphon the gas out. Hmmm, you know what? 
> There is apparently a spring assisted swing gate at the bottom of the 
> filler tube, probably to stop spash-back from the pump as you fill the 
> tank. Well, try as I might, I could only get 1/2 the fuel out via the 
> filler tube, so put the car on the lift, attached the siphon hose to the 
> inlet nipple to the tank and sucked it dry. Next, I'm going to get 5 
> gallons of high-test from a different gas station, change the fuel 
> filter, and see if that cures the problem. 
> 
> 
> 
> Questions: 
> 
> 
> 
> 1. My parts store guy told me that if this doesn't cure the problem, I 
> should take the carb apart, empty the floats ( float bowls maybe), clean 
> the carb thoroughly, try it again. Does this mean just taking the top 
> off the carb while it's still mounted to the manifold or should I take 
> it completely off? Thoughts? Advice? The last time I did something like 
> this was about 45 years ago. 
> 
> 
> 
> 2. I noticed that the metal tube coming off the gas tank to the rubber 
> fuel line is 5/16" OD while the metal fuel line OD is 3/8". I had some 
> new 3/8" rubber fuel line to replace the old (probably original) rubber 
> line that joins the gas tank to the solid fuel line, but didn't use it 
> because it just felt too loose. The solid 5/16" line coming off the fuel 
> tank does have a double flare on the end, so maybe I'm just being 
> paranoid, that a 3/8" rubber hose rated for gas is just fine? Appreciate 
> any comments. 
> 
> 
> 
> So, my plan to so eliminate fuel as an issue, going the route I 
> described. If that doesn't work, I'll reinstall the single 
> point distributor and see if that fixes things. If that doesn't work, 
> well I'm not going there just yet. 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks all. Appreciate the forum and the sound advice we can get here. 
> /Butch/ Ferndale, WA
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 



Paul L.
'63 Sport Fury
440/727
http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/ml-lennemann63.html


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----
Please address private mail -- mail of interest to only one person -- directly to that person.  I.e., send parts/car transactions and negotiations as well as other personal messages only to the intended recipient, not to the Clubhouse public address. This practice will protect your privacy, reduce the total volume of mail and fine tune the content signal to Mopar topic.  Thanks!

1962 to 1965 Mopar Clubhouse Discussion Guidelines:
http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/mletiq.html and http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.com/general_disclaimer.html. 

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