only idles well at at full retard position

christian

christian

Senior Member
Hello, Im trying to get my 31 running smoothly after being dormant since 1953. I have changed out many parts including a new distributor, a professionally rebuilt carb, plugs, battery etc. The car seems to run well and pulls great through the gears however when it idles it lopes badly unless i have the spark rod all the way up. I have the timing set to where it sparks a few notches down while at TDC. As far as the idle mixture screw, it idles best at 3/4 turn open from seat.

I hear that these are supposed to idle well a few notches down on the spark rod, and 1 and a half turns from seat on the mixture screw. Any idea whats going on?

thanks for any input.
 
it should idle very well with spark all the way up and gav about 1/3 turn open... is your steering column adjusted to get full range of spark lever? it can be adjusted with lever all way up on quadrant and dist arm all way retarded... use the columns clamp to obtain this then recheck timing... then also adjust air jet in till idle abit rough, then back it out till idle smooths out...also point gap ok?.....on the road ,spark about 1/2 way down on quadrant....
 
also idle speed can be about when you can almost count revolutions of fan turning.....and hear carb sucking air.....
 
Well, decided to return to the timing, which checked out good. But I noticed the points gap looked quite small. I checked it with a feeler gauge and it came out to be about .010". I must have not tightened down the locking screw from when I set it in the first place. I set it to .020" and torqued down the screw nicely. I then took a look at my plugs, as I hate to admit, I never checked the gap on them, just threw them in straight from the box. They checked out at 020". Gapped them to 035" and re installed. Started it up and it ran the same. Moved done the spark lever and it went from hearing every cylinder firing to a nice smooth hum with a bit of lope. Went to the carb and took the mixture screw from 3/4 open straight to 1-1/2 open. It ran with much less lope but still not perfect. Took it in oe more 1/4 turn and perfection.

Being a child of the 90's where fuel injection is all I grew up with, I had no idea plug gap and point gap played such a large role.
 
christian said:
Hello, Im trying to get my 31 running smoothly after being dormant since 1953. I have changed out many parts including a new distributor, a professionally rebuilt carb, plugs, battery etc. The car seems to run well and pulls great through the gears however when it idles it lopes badly unless i have the spark rod all the way up. I have the timing set to where it sparks a few notches down while at TDC. As far as the idle mixture screw, it idles best at 3/4 turn open from seat.

I hear that these are supposed to idle well a few notches down on the spark rod, and 1 and a half turns from seat on the mixture screw. Any idea whats going on?

thanks for any input.
Click to expand...


Set it to spark with the slightest downward movement of the spark rod. See post #5
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top