59 AB Missing

gmanrides

gmanrides

Senior Member
Hey guys I had a chance to work on this engine last night and here is what I found. The Autolite 414's were too long and the valves were coming in contact slightly. I removed them and believe it or not it took 4 parts houses to come up with two sets of plugs the 216's and the H10C. I gaped them and put the 216's in and it ran great for about 4 miles running through the gears and smiling but then I got an ever so slight miss. So I turned it around and headed back and the miss worsened but made it home. Pulled the plugs and rechecked gap and for contact all looked good. Vacuum bounced between 12-15 but steady at 20 around 2500 rpm's. Dwell meter showed 34 deg. Today I am heading to the garage to mark TDC and pull the distributor and inspect.
So far I removed the two 97's and installed a single 94, sending the 97's to Uncle Max since I could not get them to lean out enough. New plugs, coil and condensor.
I have ordered new plug wires, cap, rotor, dist cap, points but have not arrived yet.
The engine has low miles on it. The gentleman I bought the car from gave me all the receipts and it looks to be .030 over and is suppose to have a 400 JR cam in it which may have something to do with the vacuum reading at idle? Any input or ideas? I'll keep plugging away in the meantime. Thanks Gary
 
Here is what I found on the distributor. The cap is chewed up, it looks to be advanced somewhat, point gap was good but looks like there is some pitting. The vacuum brake was so tight I could barely turn the distributor with my hand so I backed it out. Once I did that you could feel the play in the shaft. I guess I know where I am going from here. :)
 

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As I have not found enough I had to just keep testing. I found #2,7 and 8 wires partially in cap and not fully seated. That sure couldn't have helped. I also did a ohm check on the distributor because I couldn't believe how well it ran even for a short period. Putting my red lead on the wire stud I could put the black lead to case and see .004, does not seem right to me with the stud being insulated but on the other hand there is no other ground for the distributor to create the fire at the points.
 

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Is that long screw that is in the condenser locating hole touching the points screw? It looks very close in the pic. They may have advanced it to stop the screw touching the hot side of the points. It should be a lot shorter than that. The points gap looks very wide in the pic. Should be around .015". Plugs should be around .025".

(Just looked again and I can see you were holding the points open with a screwdriver or something.)

Mart.
 
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Hey Mart, I noticed that screw as well but I had it backed out when running the car when I relocated the condensor. I ran it back in to check cause it seemed pretty long to me as well. Yes sir, I was holding the points open in that picture to try and see the points. With out a comparison unit I am speculating, one set of points look fine the other not so much, not sure what is acceptable play in the distributor but I would not think it should be cutting up the cap like it has. Hopefully this and the three plug wires that were not fully inserted in the cap takes care of the issue if not I'll go deeper. Thanks Gary
 
Ok, I had a chance to piddle a little with another distributor from a friend. Set points to .015, new cap, rotor and wires. Point plate was advanced to first digit past center mark (the other dist was set clean up to the top mark). Started it up and actually drove it 8-10 miles no miss. Throttle seems late now slow response like it needs some advance. Dwell on meter now shows 37 deg and vacuum dropped from initial reading bounces 8-10 now at 550 rpms. I think tomorrow I will give it a little advance, test drive it and recheck my readings.
 
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