no power (still)

J

John MacDonald

Member
Can someone advise me on how to check my timing on my 1948 2dr sedan with the 239. idles real nice but no power when revved up. Used my vacuum gauge and said late timing, but almost in green for normal engine, saw in another post about loose wire in distributor, will check that out. have replaced coil and condenser. Can't find any vacuum leaks . thanks
 
I am not sure from your earlier post if you eliminated the carburetor as a source of the problem of no power above idle. Please describe how you concluded no power above idle. Does it stall or stumble if you try to rev it up in neutral. Does it run smoothly while trying to accelerate in gear but just lacks power, or does it stall, stumble, miss, or what.
Give us some more information and we can help pinpoint the problem.
 
I have sort of a steep driveway, will not rev up enough to produce power to climb small incline, but after replacing condenser and coil did manage to get it out of driveway, but little power to shift gears, nursed it home(again) pretty sure not carb or fuel pump as both have been replaced and still doing same thing,car moves freely
 
A compression test would tell a lot.

"kind of like running on one cylinder" This sounds like a problem in the secondary ignition system. Caps, rotor, plug wires, plugs.
 
Had a similar problem which just started. Barely running at all when previously ran fine.
Turned out the soldered bracket attached to the condenser had come apart!! Earth problem. Refitted one of Tubmans trash can condensers and all is good again.
This problem gave a few headaches as went down the fuel pump, carb track before finally finding this condenser problem
Phil NZ
 
Okay, pretty sure it is not a timing problem. Even if the distributor was set at full retard or full advance, you would still get enough power to pull up and out of the driveway. If, the mechanical advance is working.



Pop the distributor cap off and be sure the rotor tip is straight. Look for any tiny carbon tracks inside the cap. Grab the rotor and see if it will rotate back and forth about 20 degrees, just to be sure that the mechanical advance pieces are not stuck. Be sure the coil wire and every every spark plug wire going into the distributor cap(s) are fully seated in their holes.
 
Ok will do,this distributor was rebuild and calibrated by Charlie Schwendler about year ago with very few miles on it, but will pull off and recheck everything, Thanks again
 
just wondering do you have a timing light ? just find any mark and raise the revs the mark should seem to move forward if you get to about 1500 rpm and it remains in the same spot good chance the advance has locked up or even the vac brake wont release for some reason
 
A flathead will run on 1 sent of points, but not well. Sometimes the spring on one set will break and cause oddball results. My vote is the problem is somewhere in the distributor.
 
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