An Old Guy, A Comb, and "A" Comment

J

jg61hawk

Senior Member
I had my 1929 Roadster parked at a restaurant Saturday morning. This older man comes over and starts talking about "the old days," cars and stuff.

He asks me if I think the motor is any good and is it tuned properly? I said I thought so. He asks if he can check.

I start the car, let it warm up and he removes a plastic comb from his pocket. He then individually removes one spark plug wire at a time. As he does this the car keeps running, obviously a little slower with each one removed until it is running on one cylinder.

With that he congratulates me. He declares the engine good and properly tuned. He says that's the way they did it "back then". What do you think?
 
You shouldn't leave the spark with no path to ground. It will try to jump inside the coil, along the coil tower, through the rotor to the shaft, or crossfire inside the distributor body.

You are much better off to ground out each plug, even if this involves having someone holding their fingers on the plugs. :eek::D
 
jg61hawk said:
I had my 1929 Roadster parked at a restaurant Saturday morning. This older man comes over and starts talking about "the old days," cars and stuff.

He asks me if I think the motor is any good and is it tuned properly? I said I thought so. He asks if he can check.

I start the car, let it warm up and he removes a plastic comb from his pocket. He then individually removes one spark plug wire at a time. As he does this the car keeps running, obviously a little slower with each one removed until it is running on one cylinder.

With that he congratulates me. He declares the engine good and properly tuned. He says that's the way they did it "back then". What do you think?
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No thanks Sir i'm good ,,,, enjoy your day
 
He asks me if I think the motor is any good and is it tuned properly?

Hmmm ..........

Wonder how he checks his wife to see if she is still still good and tuned properly ?????
 
FWIW, I knew an old fellow, back in the '50's, who would stall a Model A by putting his thumbs on the cylinder head and his fingers on the spark plug wires. I'm too chicken to try it.
 
Utopia Texas said:
A real man would have removed the wires with his bare hands.
That would not be me! :)
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An old mechanic friend of mine would "pull" a plug wire off each spark plug using just his hand so he could "see" the spark and determine which cylinder was missing. He would go down the line, removing then replacing the plug wire until he came to the culprit. This was on more modern cars with V8's.

It was fun to watch the expression on the faces of the customers.
 
Chief could KILL a 4 cyl engine by shorting the plugs out, with his fingers!! BUT, he couldn't do it on an electronic ignition system---ZAAAAP!
Bill W.
 
jg61hawk said:
I had my 1929 Roadster parked at a restaurant Saturday morning. This older man comes over and starts talking about "the old days," cars and stuff.

He asks me if I think the motor is any good and is it tuned properly? I said I thought so. He asks if he can check.

I start the car, let it warm up and he removes a plastic comb from his pocket. He then individually removes one spark plug wire at a time. As he does this the car keeps running, obviously a little slower with each one removed until it is running on one cylinder.

With that he congratulates me. He declares the engine good and properly tuned. He says that's the way they did it "back then". What do you think?
Click to expand...


What was the pattern? Front to back or back to front?
 
A grounded test light works pretty good, on cars with insulated plug wires you can slip the point between the wire and boot to contact the top of the plug. No shock, no harm to the ignition system.
 
I don't follow what you're saying. Are you saying to use a 6 or 12 volt test light to check for spark at the plug. How does that work?
 
You can use either. The test light will not light up, it will provide a safe path to ground for the spark. It is not for checking for spark, it is for seeing if that cylinder is contributing. There should be a noticeable drop in RPM when "shorting" a wire while running.
 
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