Spark rod rubbing

sailorcowboy

sailorcowboy

Member
I was messing with taking some pics of the engine for a fiend and noticed the spark lever rod is rubbing on top of one of the engine Nuts.

I would assume that Henry did NOT intend for this to be so.

I was looking for how the rod should make the journey form the steering assemble to the distributor but could not find a detailed enough diagram or one I could actually see!

I searched the forum and couldn't even get a hot on "rod"

Thanks,
Tim
 
I have the same issue, and I think it is caused by my car's sagging frame. That pulls the steering column down a tad....
 
Interesting hypothesis Chuck, but how can you tell if the frame is sagging?

on mine, the previous owner seems to have bent the rod slightly to compensate but to no avail.
 
I too have bent the rod to compensate.... Better brains than I have covered the sagging frame issue. Just do a 'find' in this forum about it. It's the 'Search this Forum' button in the red horizontal line located about the middle of the opening page.
 
The 2 tooth column has the separate upper column housing that can be rotated to raise the rod slightly or to allow the rod to fit the 20 deg opening limits in the dizzy plastic body.
The 7 tooth housing is not adjustable. Some repro rods are too short. Some folks bend the spark control arm up slightly which can change the spark rod height but may change the travel length also. If the body is not shimmed properly on the frame or the cowl too low, then that coupled with frame sag as mentioned can affect the steering column position. Also, check if the steering column bolts to the frame have wallowed out the holes with the upper bracket and pitman arm disconnected.
 
Funny that this was brought up as I just had a problem like this. My car had a repro spark rod on it (the one from the column to distributor) and rather than adjusting the column or compensating, they chose to bend the rod a little more than slightly. I could deal with it not looking right but I started to have loss of power issues. I discovered this week that my engine had turned into a 3 cylinder with that rod rubbing against the spark plug shorting out a cylinder. Took a nice straight original and it fit perfectly.
 
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