There are some new revelations on the Yellow Peril following our return from Carlisle. We drove 2784 miles, used 111 gallons of gas giving an overall average just under 25 mpg with a couple tanks giving us over 27 mpg. We returned home without opening the toolbox. Since I'll be driving it to St. Louis this Friday I figured I'd clean it up some, so Sunday afternoon I sprayed most of the engine compartment with the purple degreaser and then hosed it down well with the garden hose. It doesn't look a LOT cleaner but I sure washed a lot of dirt out of it. Couple hours later I tried to start it. Would NOT start. Did backfire a couple times, blowing the top off the aircleaner. From this I gleaned that something was amiss with the ignition timing. I popped the distributor cap and found that the center electrode, the spring-loaded one, was flush with the inside of the cap. I started at B&C, went to Auto Zone, Advance Auto Parts and finally found the cap at O'Reilley's. Took it home and also installed the new blue IPD spark plug wires I won in the VCOA drawing at Carlisle. I was careful to number the positions on the new cap after the ones on the old cap and even marked the wires to avoid confusion there. Got it all hooked up and it still would not start. Looking again I noted that the vacuum advance arm had come off the pin on the breaker plate and the plate was advanced maybe 5° additional, which might account for the poor performance of the mid-grade gas near the east coast. So I fixed that and tried again, still no start, although it tried (without much gusto). I made a gizmo to ease the testing of the trigger points by taking a 3-spade connector off an old harness and leaving the middle wire longer than the other two. I also made one of the outboard wires black so I could tell which point was which. Turned out one trigger point was breaking just fine and the other never completely closed or completely opened. I guess the insulator was wet and the point was dirty. Took out the distributor and cleaned the trigger points and wiped both with 1000 grit wetordry after cleaning them with carb cleaner. After that they acted right both in and out of the distributor, so I put the distributor back in and tried again. Seemed to run fairly well but idle was QUITE slow. Also there was a puddle of oil to the passenger side of the engine on the driveway.
I loosened the distributor and turned it to where the idle was normal and checked the timing, which was very close to right, so I made final adjustment.
Seems to run normally now and it turned out the oil filter was not quite tight enough. In the past they have been almost unremoveable so this time I tried not to overtighten, and it is obvious that I did not. By hand I was able to turn it over 180° which seems to have stopped the leaking. (It didn't clean up the mess, however, and I REFUSE to wash the engine AGAIN!)
So, thanks to O'Reilley's and considerable perseverance, we are back in operation again.
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George Downs Bartlesville, Oklahoma