Technical Damn Hotrod Let me Down Again! A Road Warrior Story - Issue 1/2 Resolved!

Background...1928 AV8 fenderless roadster, 59Ab, Eddie Meyer stuff, 2 carbs, Harmon Collins dual point dual coil, Isky max-1, '39 3spd, banjo rear etc...

So, last year I'm heading from Bowen Island to Penticton for the Peach City Cruise. I take the ferry to the mainland, stop 5 miles up the transcanada hwy to gas up and all is right with the world. Gassed up, I go to start the flatty and it's suddenly running on 4 cylinders, try a couple roadside diagnostics, determine that I lost one half of the ignition...limp back home on 4 cylinders. Take an OT car to the show. Once back home, I determined the cause to be a failed condenser. Order up 2 new Bosch units (internet chatter implies these units to be better than most of the Chinese crap being made these days). Installed, and the car once again runs like a top!

Fast forward to this year, heading to the same show, about 1/2 way there, on steady throttle I start to notice what seems to be a bit of a lean surge. We're still rolling so let's keep going. We get about 2/3's of the way there, one of the guys travelling with us, sends a text to say I'm leaking a bit at the top of the hills. Temp 170, oil pressure 45lbs, still has the lean surge symptom. We're stopping for gas soon, will check it there. Temp good, oil good, little drip of antifreeze coming from overflow tank...we're almost there, keep moving forward. As I get closer lean surge is getting drastic, turning into a full blown intermittent 1/2 motor miss. Diagnosing while driving I'm thinking loose wire on one of the coils. Last 10 miles to go, I'm on 4 cylinders again...limp into the driveway of our airbnb. Diagnose another damn condenser failure! Put on the spare (the remaining good one tucked away after last years attempt) and we're again firing on all 8, good news.

The bad news, I take a gallon of water in the rad. Running it and peering into the filler neck reveals the telltale foaming and pulsing that says possible headgasket issue (I bought copper after reading they were the best choice when I built the motor about 500 miles ago, re-torqued the heads and heat cycled about 6 times until I wasn't gaining any movement during the re-torquing).

So, off to uhaul to rent a stretcher to get it home (fortunately, I had family visiting from back east and coming along to the show in my truck...so we had a tow vehicle). I am really looking forward to some dependability from these old parts! I hate limping home with my tail between my legs.

How about about some road warrior stories from you guys to help me feel less alone!

 

That sucks, put this in your back pocket for next trip up...... I'n in Abbotsford right off hwy 1. I have room in the shop and more than happy to help out if I can.

 

Thanks...we were still running good in Abbotsford...About Princeton was the beginning of the surge. But always good to have a friend on the road. I appreciate it.

 

i never go over 20 miles from home!!

 

Just a few weeks ago coming home from the All Deuce Run I had a very similar problem and was running on 4 cylinders, I pulled into a Advance Auto and started swapping parts but everything I did was a waste of time and the heat was getting to me in the parking lot.

I'm a 150 miles from home in a town I know nothing about and the car ain't going to get home under it's own power and add to the fact the guy at the parts store said he wouldn't leave a Pinto in the parking lot at night and I knew I had to make a Hail Mary call to a pal to bring a trailer.

Long story short, Dave rolled into the parking lot around 11 PM and we loaded up the car, got a motel room for the night and headed home on Sunday, the problem was tracked down to the crossfire distributor cap, ordered a new one and the car is back on the road.

I reimbursed Dave for the gas, motel room and breakfast and was happy to do so. HRP

 

Sbc

 

What's the fun in that? They don't break if you don't drive them. Fix it better than last time and it won't break again. Repeat...

 

Since this is the second time for a condenser(electric) I would look at your grounds. I'm anal about grounds, 40 + years ago when a old hot rodder taught me to wire he insisted on wiring a car as if it was wood, a ground wire for everything, no metal carrying the ground. Many may disagree but it has worked great for me. Pete

 

I had to "like" it, even though I don't like it. My hypocrisy knows no bounds.

 

Call up @tubman. He mfrs some condensers fit for Mallory distributors. Great product, exact Mallory specs. Will ride 'outboard' on 59A '39-'48 ign.

I had been using Bosch VW type (type II, bus) condensers for years. Still am, and still run on all 8.

 

This would have to been 1998 or 1999, on the way to Louisville to the street rod nationals got about an hour out and noticed temp gauge was going up. Stopped to investigate, all the belts were loose. I thought it was strange, got the tools out tightened them, went to start it and wouldn’t start. Called a roll back had it taken to my motel. When a friend got there we checked it out , the diatributor wasn’t turning. Called a roll back again had it taken to the fairgrounds to the hot rod repair area. The next morning pulled the timing cover the dampener broke and a part of it went through the timing chain braking it. My 39 deluxe coupe let me down. Chased down a dampener at a wrecking yard new gaskets and chains and gears and drove it off the fairgrounds that night. Way to much work

 

I had to have my coupe hauled home one time, fortunately I was only a few miles from home. We had a small under the hood fire! It seems that when I built the car 4 years before, I ran the battery cable below the battery box, When I turned the wheels all the way to the left, the tire was pushing the battery cable against the bottom of the battery box. After all the miles we had driven, the insulation on the battery cable finally wore through and shorted out on the battery box. I've redone the wiring and have solved that issue.

We are past 50,000 miles on the car and are still adding on. When you drive them, you have to keep up on them. When (not if) you have a problem you need to find out what caused the problem, not assume you know what it was, or it will come back and bite you again.

I also run a ground wire for every electrical component. I like the car made out of wood thinking. If the component needs to be grounded, provide a ground wire for it. Solves a lot of electrical issues. Gene

 

Interesting comments on the grounds...Battery is in trunk. I have a 0 gauge welding wire going from the battery to the chassis, I have a large ground strap going from the chassis to the body and a large ground strap from the chassis to the engine. Not sure how to better ground the HC distributor...but will certainly listen if that might solve the issue.

 

You ever consider just riding the bus .... Where is your sense of adventure?


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How is the O gauge welding wire attached to the chassis? Have you removed the connection and looked for corrosion between the wire lug and the chassis? Does the attaching bolt screw into the 1/8" thick frame, or is it attached with a bolt and nut you are sure is tight? How about the ground straps to the motor and to the body, have you looked at them recently? Are they big enough to carry the voltage without adding resistance? The ground attachment at the chassis would be my biggest concern, but paint under the motor ground strap is asking for trouble. Since you are expecting you cars chassis to replace the 0 gauge battery ground cable, the connections at the chassis become very important. Each connection is a possible point to add resistance in the system. Resistance at the grounds causes as many problems as resistance on the positive battery connections.

I'm not sure how your HC dual point dist is set up. If its like most dist setups, the condenser is attached with a screw threaded into a breaker plate that moves with the advance weights. Most of those breaker plates are grounded through the distributor housing by means of a ground wire, often placed under the plate. Do you know what condition that ground wire is in? Is the housing making a good ground to the motor block? A bit of an oil film between the housing and the block can disrupt the grounding effect, and will add resistance. The dist may function OK, but if there is high resistance on the ground side, the condenser may fail prematurely. This chance of premature condenser failure could be higher if your dual point dist fires 1/2 the spark plugs in the motor per set of points, which I would expect is the case because you have dual coils. Back in the old days, the condensers were much better stuff then what is available today, today's poorer made condensers may not be able to handle anything less the the optimized ground with no additional resistance. Gene

 

With the car now in the shop, I decided to try and test for grounding issues. The multi-meter shows very little resistance from the distributor (or anywhere else on the motor or chassis) to the negative terminal of the battery (the 2 probes of the meter touched together shows .1 on the digital scale, from the distributor body to the negative terminal of the battery shows .2 on the digital scale, as a reference, the resistance of an 1156 single filament bulb reads .8 on the digital scale of my multi-meter). That said, I removed all chassis and body ground locations (flange nuts welded to the chassis, with bolts that thread into them) and found them to be clean, tight, rust and paint free and coated with dielectric grease. The ground strap to the engine may have been a bit small (looked to be about 4 gauge), so I replaced it with a 0 gauge wire.

I'm going to replace the now mismatched (but working) condensers with a pair of NAPA RR175 condensers (per recommendation from @GMC BUBBA) and will keep the working mismatched set as spares in the trunk..

 

So, in the interest of closing a loop, or revealing the likely source of the condenser failure this time...I think I've found it.

But first, let me add that when I cut the first failed condenser apart last year, I found an original old style condenser with soldered internal connections. One of the soldered connections had failed and showed signs of arcing over time. I did not photograph it, as I never thought it to be relevant.

I looked closely at the recent second failed condenser, from the outside it showed a flat crease on the bottom (I can't comment on the cause, as it was not hitting anything on the top of the distributor, I suspect it came this way, and I failed to notice it or thought it would be irrelevant when I first installed it). When I cut it apart however, that crease would have caused a gap between the casing and the internal foil wrap. It was able to make enough of an electrical connect when newly installed, but over a short period of time, higher rpm and vibration it obviously began arcing and eventually lost all electrical connection.

Following are pictures of what I'm talking about (ignore the crap on the outside of the condenser case, that was just a thin smear of JB weld I had used to hold the clamp in place after I reversed it to better fit the top of the distributor, I had to break it free to remove the clamp), sorry about some of the blurriness as my phone was struggling to focus. Now, on to figure out the cause of the cooling system puking out fluid...PS, doesn't look to be headgasket.

 

Is that case aluminum ? If its steel , it could be electrolysis between the aluminum foil and the case , just a thought ....

 

It seems like it might be stainless stèel. Definately not aluminum and if it were plain steel, I would expect it to rust.

 

Stainless is the more Noble metal therefore the aluminum would be the sacrificial metal ..

 

Sorry for your issues......think I'll be trying a long run soon with a flattie myself.......