Projects My AV8 flathead build.. blown...

It's a brand new dizzy. So they should be fine

 

Uptade: factory coil and condenser: 6v supply. Drove it to town today .. Ran and acted beautiful! Came all the way home, perfect. Let it sit and idle to test the overheating coil theory, backed it out the drive, bam! Runnin like ass.. So that's all it's gotta be.

 

Hey I was looking at the Joe Abbin book "Blown Flathead". He says a stock dizzy will work fine in a blown flattie with a high output coil. What coil do you have?

 

I have basicly a stock dizzy... I had the factory one from the single carb motor on there and it worked ok but same symptoms... I had bubba build me one and when it got here it was the same thing . But it was rebuilt. So I put that on there and it works great . But same symptoms. Sounds like a coil is breaking down inside


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Sounds like you are closing in on it. Good luck!

 

Hopefully this is the fix.. This little 5$ bastard . From the guys that gave me the info on this , I'm confident it will fix my poor car.. They have been doing this alot longer than me..

 

Didn't fix it at all... Same issues..... Tearing blower off tonight . Back to one carb and regular dizzy . To many variables can cause this problem so I am staring from square one.... Never had an engine act like this, and after all the diagnosing and replacement parts, still preform terrible. ... I'm starting to get very disgusted with this thing


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I took my super charger off Saturday. I found out the top of the carb hits the the radiator support rods. The radiator hoses on passenger side hits the blower housing. I did not want to have it torn apart for the summer. These are not major problems but will take some time and thought. I do not want to use flex hose and plan to find some elbows. The radiator support problem can be solved with a couple pieces of flat bar and some long bolts.

I have an old friend that commented that these blowers seem to have a lag time more than a roots blower. Maybe a smaller or larger accelerator jet will help. The heat of the spark plug may need to be cooler. I have not given up but have decided that this might be a good winter project.

I plan to run just one carb at the start. I kind of like the old saying that hot rods have tools in the trunk and street rods have rags and polish in the trunk.

Experimenting with different combinations can actually be kind of fun and thought stimulating. My old friend says he will be laying in bed thinking about his problem and sometimes spends the rest of the night in the garage to try his new idea.

My only problem is the summers are too short and global warming is looking like a myth.This has been a cold wet summer and the wood stove feels good in the mornings.

Maybe disconnect the accelerator pump on one carb?

 

Off like a prom dress


It may go back on after we get the motor running as it should with one single carb naturally aspirated. But then again it may be up for sale . Who knows. I want a drive able car.. Not one that is impossible to tune.


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Sturgis:

Yea it's a tight fit.... Someone told me when I got mine it should bolt right on.. HA... Yea right... It was a struggle to make everything work but it came out good.. I just hit a large speed bump that's all. I don't want mine down all summer either so that's why I yanked it off


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I have faith in you. You will look back in a few months and think It was not that bad. I have dual carbs on my model "A" with a two port head. I found the best combination was a 97 and a 81 for the primary. It took a lot of jet changes and tinkering and now I think it was really simple. I sure got frustrated a few times. The old flat head coils are only feed about three volts. The resistor is between the key and the coil. The polarity is important for the coil to work correctly. If you have six volt positive ground, polarity will be the same as a stock flathead and the coil should work correctly. I will be interesting to see how it runs without the blower.

 

Do what you will but dont give up too early. You have been fighting an ignition issue. Take the blower out of the issue, as you have, and get it running. Dizzy was went through by bubba. Good chioce and you should be set.

On the coil issue i would suggest a skip rebuild when it comes to original coils. Yep more money. ask some flathead guys that run them regular, skip makes them right. Old coils get hot and they boil out and fail, or a original coil running with too many volts will do the same. Runs great cold then after a cruise it starts missing. On condensers napas ih-2000 prove reliable. And don't run corn gas ever in an old ride, my thought anyway.

Great car!

 

Sturgis is right on, the resistor knocks it down. Your og coil should not be running more then 3 volts, you will burn/boil your ignition out over time. More is not always better...

 

Removed blower, re blasted intake and checked very closely for crackes using heat... No luck. So a really good guy drive his bad ass green 37 coupe over and brought me a good intake gasket ..nice ride BTW.. Anyways we got the engine all resealed and installed both carbs ... Fired right up. Ran perfect. Did a couple hot laps on the road ..... 165 degree water temp, SAME deal!!! So I removed carbs, stuck one on there... Sammmmmmeeeeeee thing. Terrible. So... I ordered new coil, new condenser, new plug wires and new plugs. Just cause the stuff I was using is off a good running motor but now ill have new. So I still leaning saying I have 4 bad coils here and 2 bad condensers....... Hmmmm.

 

I'm 100% sure it's something Ignition related... I have a good dizzy . Everything else is older.. So it's gotta be the coil and condenser


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I hate gremlins but love your A...You will figure it out ..I just hope its not a valve or something internal?

 

boxed up one of my spare coils and mailed it to skip this morning.. bubbas is going to shoot me out s special condenser.. That should tie up the ends of the ignition system that have not been new or rebuilt.

 

hang in there... it will be well worth the hassle once everything is up and running in perfect order!

 

Been following this since I found it a few weeks ago.. I was hoping today was the magical day and all was well.. you're very close to sticking that blower back on..
great build, I DIG IT!!!!

 

it will def be worth it!

A few more days of waiting and it should all pan out.. i think im finally done bitching about it !
I will just have to try and be patient.. thanks for all the compliments guys

 

Hang in there..you will get it..AND just think, this will never happen to you again.

 

Got home from work today and fired up the car. It barley started . When it did run it seemed ok. With in 2 mins it was running terrible. I put a bag of ice on the coil , it made a difference. Pretty sure it burnt the condenser up also. That's why it won't rev. I've seen that alot also. Called skip to let him know my coil was on the way. He said it would be 5 business days minimum for him to get to it. Also waiting on my new tie rod and ends to come for the 37 spindles. I'm hoping to get that all assembled and fit while the car is down and out. Another old timer today told me to make sure the bolts that hold the intake down are not leaking, said they used to throw a lead washer under each bolt , one reason is so you can't over tighten em, two is for a sealant cause he said them damn manifolds warp and never bolt down flat and the gaskets seap.

 

Is there a vw place in your town?
I mean aircooled beetles
They sell 6 volt bosch blue coil with internal resistor

You just need an adapter for the distributor....

 

So it's midnight roughly ..... And here is an update. It's fixed... Several things were wrong. 1st off.... Champion plugs are the biggest pile-o-shit plug I have ever seen... They are brand new and 3 plugs were shorting out inside the ceramic. I put a set if motocraft in it and it was a world of difference. But that was not all of it. I converted the car to 12v (temporarily) I installed a very hot coil and condenser from my old pulling truck. After that it was still acting up.... So I just stepped back and the one thing I didn't look close at was the the caps on the dizzy... Come to find out after pulling them apart from the wires and throwing them in the oven to see if they were cracked. At 150 degrees there is a very large crack that develops between two of the electrodes. So... It would warm up from engine temp,( approx 140 on the gauge is when it would throw a fit), and split open . making a short between the two electrodes and firing on cylinders when it was not supposed to.. So i dug out the spares, acid washed them and polished the electrodes, stuck it back together. Now all these things I did tonight made it run top notch.. There were several very loud hole shots up the road but no long road test. But I had it running up to 180 degrees , and for half hour like that with no issues what so ever.... So I'm declaring this heap FIXED.... Maybe tomorrow ill drive it a bit and then start preparing the charger to go back on.........hope all goes well

 

Congrats man. Good luck getting the blower back on. I'm glad you figured it out that kind of stuff just wears down your moral when working on stuff and of course it's hard to find the problem when there are multiple things going wrong at once.

 

TAH-DAH! Way to go! You are indeed Mr. Fixit, or the Science Guy's apprentice. Gary

 

Trust me, my wife is happier than I am that it is fixed... It's been a loooooong week at my house!


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Thanks... I was starting to get a lil grumpy with the situation


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found a nice article with the instructions for installing my supercharger:
http://mcpax.com/install37f2.htm

it does help see how exacty the had it planned. it leaves alot of details out though

 

glad you got it working, like the oven idea. Maybe the plugs went bad because of the faulty ignition. Dunno never ran champions. Hope the blower works out for you next.