Just got the old girl on the road and I'm having a couple problems going I can get some advise.. Here's what it is.. 8ba, stock rebuild, 97 carb rebuilt by a repuatble guy here on the HAMB, bubba points dizzy, and other than that its stock stuff... Set the timing at Tdc, idles great, take off down the road and she does good until you accelerate and it breaks up terrible.. Back off and again perfect.. Just checked all the wires and the points and all seems okay.. Also don't know if it's related but the passenger side header has "blued".. Another question is, I filled the radiator to the top, it has an offset neck, and it keeps pushing water out of the overflow.. I can't see the level.. Is there a way to keep a check on the level? Thanks for any help!!
If memory serves me, Bubbas dizzy likes about 20 degrees of advance, which is close to 1" to the right of the timing mark on your pulley. Set it there and your stumble/breakup, should go away if your problem is distributor related. At least you know the timing will be right.
Tom,try bumping the advance on the distributor a little it might help,,BTW,the car looks great,I know your Dad is smiling down on you! HRP
I fill my flathead radiator to the top of the core (about 1/2" over) and leave room for expansion in the top of the radiator. Use a 7# cap. That's about it!
Play with the timing. The mark is usually off a bit and you have to find the sweet spot. Is it the chevy conversion bubba dist? If not, is your advance working off the vac?
stock 97.?...my 8BA need two of them..way back I bought two rebuilds from 97 heaven...didn't want to change the intake..took the 94 off and put the 97 on..just as you're saying..and had to play with the throttle to get up to speed...??
If it has a stock 8BA dist in it, I believe it requires a special vacuum advance port found on the 94 style carb that it came with. It's not your average vacuum port. Your 97 won't have that. I know it can be an issue with dual carbs. I lucked out and got an old mechanical advance Mallory dist. when I built mine. My radiator was stock 32 and not pressurized. I just filled it up to the top and let it warm up. Some coolant would come out of the overflow as it got up to temp. When it cools down the level goes down. I kept an eye on the temp gauge if after a year or so it started to get up above 185, I'd repeat the process and it immediately went back to normal. It never was a problem. As long as it never got hot and it never did, I never worried about it. If I were you I wouldn't either.
It is the chevy with no vacuum advance.. I reset it like the first reply said.. It's a whole lot better but probably not quite there.. I can't see the top of the core on the radiator.. It seems to have stopped... I just drove it about 20 miles and it runs pretty good... Loud!! I put a couple 2 foot extensions on the headers just to work out the bugs this weekend...
seems to me the others have you going in the right direction to solve your problem, so all im gonna say is... i really like your car.
Me thinks they look good either way... Here's my old man in the 50's... Tha guy I owe the credit for teaching me the little bit I've figured out!! With or without??? Who knowshttp://emob792.photobucket.com/albums/yy201/sbc78bu/old%20pics/1121152.jpg
No!!! He's the guy in the middle.... The 34 5 window.. I don't know who the guy with the bowtie is...
I love the car, you done good. If you have Champion spark plugs, they can cause a miss above about 3200. I used NGK's in my flatty and it ran great to 4800 with no other changes. I used 6 degrees initial, and a total of 26 at 2000 engine RPM.
I use NGK spark plugs. I wanted to use Champion but they would quit working after a few hundred miles. The car is in town now so I can not give you a spark plug number. Somebody will chime in with the number. Like your hot rod.
Still at it... had this thing running beautiful saturday night and sunday... Took it to work 15 miles and broke down 4x.. found that the coil with the built in resistor was wired backwards.. my bad, switched it, and now sometimes the car runs good, but most of the time it breaks up real bad like a timing miss, breaking up out of the exhaust. I ohmed out the coil 3.9ohms, im lost now... is a coil either good or bad or can it break down?
O'Reilleys stocked the correct NGK plug about three years ago. I have since sold the car, but my rusty old brain says B6L gapped to .030 This with a MOPAR ignition. I had the same trouble with champions in my Y block. NGK is the only way to go.
Just an idea, but I had an ingition switch go bad that drove me crazy for about a year. Car done similar things like you discribed. I screwed with the carb and timing, changed out points, coil and condenser but it still would "lope" on me going down the road like it had a slight miss. Finally the ignition switch died all together so I hot wired around it and the car never ran better or had more power.
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