1948 Super Deluxe Ignition (?) Woes

Grounding, grounding, grounding. It's the cheapest and easiest thing you can do. Battery to frame. body to frame, and engine to body. Make sure the starter has a good ground to the motor. If the starter was rebuilt and then painted, the paint on the end of the starter may not be allowing the starter to make a good ground to the motor. Do this before you go any further. Also make sure you have the correct size battery cables.
 
Back from the holidays for several weeks now and working on the Ford to fix the hard starting and engine dying out problems. I decided to remove the Pertronics electronic ignition module and coil (even though they checked out fine) and save them for a rainy day, and go back to the original points and coil setup. I boxed up my distributor, carburetor, fuel pump and coil and sent them to Third Gen Automotive for inspection, repair or replacement. Got them back in a week’s time!. The coil and fuel pump checked out fine. The distributor was machined and received points, timing set and condenser. The carb base had several issues (hole on the inside of the base in one of the barrel shafts, hole in the outside and worn throttle shaft bushings) and was rebuilt. Put all the parts back on the car and no go. Discovered that majority of new sparkplug wires were not firing. Checked wires for continuity and they were fine. Used two different distributor caps and neither worked. Me thinks the distributors are not of the best quality and that the rabbit ear distributor cap is a horrible design. The wires enter the distributor cap and then have to be bent some 135 degrees in the opposite direction to affix to the cap. That, plus an extremely small area to work in, make the task practically impossible. I have ordered a replacement 1942 crab type distributor, rotor and wires, which makes a lot more sense to me. As soon as they arrive, I expect to be up and running. Thanks so much for all of the help in all of the posts. More later.
 
Al, not sure if it's been mentioned above, but I found my '47 liked solid core ignition wires a lot better than the suppression ones, but I'm still 6 volts positive ground. Even with my crab...rebuilt and timed by Jim Linder....I still had a miss under constant highway speed. Changed the wires and that fixed it!!!


You have been at this for a while now and I can empathize with your frustration!!!


Best of luck in fixing this!!!:rolleyes:
 
Just a little bit on almost the same problem on my 50 cpe just shut off go to the side of road crank a little and away we go had it die in driveway great got out my test light no power at coil wiggle the wire had power on off found that the copper wire had broken inside of plastic cover at the coil terminal soldered new terminal on no problem since every time engine would shake would make and break circuit hope this helps anyone
 
I had a problem with my Pertronix-equipped '48. It would not re-start after the initial couple of start, re-starts after the motor was rebuilt. Crab distributor was Bubba-checked as was matching Pertronix coil. I had someone that knows way more than me come over to help diagnose the problem. He saw a small spot inside the rotor and another on the outside where he suspected the spark was shorting against the distributor shaft before reaching the end of the rotor to fire the plugs (see pictures). I would have never seen those marks. He said he had seen the same thing on a Mazda engine that challenged him in the past.

I took the ballast resistor out of the circuit (per Pertronix) and replaced the cap and rotor with USA-made NAPA parts. It instantly fired right up. Seems to be fine now.
 

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Recently I installed the carburetor, distributor, crab style distributor cap, rotor and wires, all rebuilt and or new, from Third Generation Automotive. And alas, I now have a good starting ’48 Ford that will continue running until I turn the key off. Hallelujah! I’m back in business!

A few days ago on a trip to east Tennessee, I stopped by Third Generation Automotive to meet Michael Driskell in person and to see his shop. He is a remarkable young man.….extremely knowledgeable and helpful. His shop is huge and I’ve never seen so many early Ford parts. He sells, repairs and rebuilds parts, engines, transmissions, differentials, etc., and does restorations. He has a huge eBay Store online parts business and is the current President of the almost 8,000 member national Early Ford V8 Club. Not to mention he is married and a parent. He is one busy guy.

I wish to thank Third Generation Automotive for all of their work on and help with my failed parts, and all the Ford Barn forum members that posted for their advice and help. I’m back on the road now and lovin’ it!
 
Another coil thought. The Flamethrower II coil is 45,000 volts. That is borderline too high for inside of a crab distributor. It can jump the spark to the wrong place. That can cause the random run, miss, die, restart phenomenon. The plain flamethrower is 40,000 volts. That is what I have been running into my 12v Pertronix, with no problems. I carry the Bosh blue as a spare.
 
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