1946 ford v8 help

tony1

tony1

Member
Hi everyone i am new to the site and have just purchased a 1946 Ford with the flathead 8, The car was frame off restore about 25 years ago and then parked inside about 15 years ago. Now it is up to me to get it running and thought i would try to get a little info. What i have found so far is that checking compression old school with finger and cranking all cylinders seem to have very good compression except 1 seems to have very little on right bank first hole in front. The other issue is with ignition on and wires attaches to coil i get no power but when i take the distributor wire off the coil i get power so i am thinking something in the distributor is shorting.Any help would be great. Don't know much about the flathead 8 and not sure on how to get that distributor apart where it is located. Thanks very much.
 
The low compression could be a stuck valve since the vehicle has been setting so long. They will sometimes free themselves if some Marvel Mystery Oil is liberally sprayed through the spark plug hole up toward the valves.

The ignition system is actually very simple but it is way different than modern vehicle for certain. There is a bale, that holds the cap, that can be positioned out of the way to pull the cap & wires away from the distributor. The distributor can then be removed for service. Timing is fixed on these old cars as far as the placement of the distributor and the slotted drive can only be positioned one way to get the thing back on correctly. Timing can be affected by points adjustment so a person needs an old Ford manual to set them and the vacuum brake for the retard mechanism. The original coils were a plastic box and they can be in need of an overhaul by Skip Haney. Condensers can go bad with time as well. One of the Ford Barn contributors that goes by "Bubba" has all the equipment to set up these old ignition systems if you don't want to mess with it. There is also a ballast resistor in this system that can go bad with time. It is in the line between the ignition switch and the coil.

The fuel systems don't like to set for long periods since varnish builds up & plugs important passages. You may have to do a lot of work there to get good fuel delivery going again.

Welcome Into the Barn
Kerby
 
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Welcome to the Barn!
Sounds like you've got a good one. As said these are pretty simple, if it was running before, may just need a good cleaning.
How about some pictures?
 
Welcome Tony. If the car has sat a while the points can get a film on them. Drag a piece of emery cloth or wet and dry sandpaper through them a couple of times.

GB
 
welcome to the 'Barn.....yep, we love pics....lol....and those i can't see....hopefully pics of the car....distributor, etc....have fun with your car....Mike
 
Not sure how to post pics it did not work. When i turn key on and send power to the coil the test lite shows power on both sides of coil as long as the distributor wire is not hooked the moment i connect the distributor wire to the coil i have no power to the coil. and i took the bail wire off the cap but if i seperate the cap will all of the plug wires come off under the rubber if so i will have to figure the fireing order i guess. May be stupid question but it is pretty hard to get to that distributor.
 
If you use the go advanced option to post, you can scroll down to a tool box that allows you to post photos right from your computer device. You just click the manage attachments button and choose the file to upload from your documents file. Ryan (the boss), prefers a relatively small file to be attached so it will save space for more stuff. If its a big one, you sometimes have to find a way to shed some of the file size or it may not upload to the site.
 
You generally have to work at it to get the wires out of the inner cap. Under the cap there will be a rotor similar to more modern set ups. The 59 series distributors are two bolt types so the bolts have to be removed to get the distributor out. It is kind of tight in there with the fan, belts, & hoses around everything.

If the points are open then there is nothing to ground out but if the points are closed then it will be grounded. There are two sets of points to better control dwell time for the coil. This was done to make everything work better and last longer.

Nice looking Coupe you got there.
 
From what i can tell the points look to be closed my concern was the wires pulling off if i seperate the cap from the rubber.
 
The inner cap should also have bales to hold it to the outer cap. If you can't get all this to separate from the distributor body, you may have to disconnect the high tension leads so that they can be moved inside the conduit assembly or you can take the whole harness with the conduits off but I don't recall ever having to do that. If the rubber boots between the caps and the conduits are old & dry, they may have lost their flexibility.
 
I got the bale off and the cap off the distributor but i can see the cap has corrosion so i was going to try to seperate it from the wires but i am concerned with getting the wires back in right order i don't know how the wires are conected under the rubber.
 
Are the wires in a fixed position under the rubber so if i seperate the cap from it they will go back on the same way.
 
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