JayEstes

Almost embarrassed to post this one, but I have to admit that I am stumped. Configuration: 302 V8 coupe, mostly stock rebuild upgraded alternator (powermaster ~75A) Original Stock ignition switch & NSS switch Stock voltage regulator Pertronix Ignition / coil New battery as of April this year Thermal choke, stock carb, new original style fuel pump Original harnesses (refurbed by midlife) Strange signature - history of events: Car hasn't been driven much over corona virus days. Fire it up to go see a friend, runs drives fine. Go to leave, solenoid clicks, no-start. Jump it, drive it 20min at highway speeds, no problems, stop at advance auto to check battery (good), asks me to start and it starts fine, run at 2000 rpm for a few min to check charging system (good), turn it off. Discuss, try to start and wont even click solenoid. Had to jump it to go home. At home I check electrical grounds. I have one from battery to chassis (non-stock), another in firewall for starter - both kind of loose, I clean, lube & tighten, but no change. ground from engine block to alternator is tight on both ends. I have noticed that I don't have radio or internal lights or fan box during no-click starts. I have headlights/domelights though. I swap out the solenoid, and no change. Next I dive into fuse block, pull it from wall and clean all fuses, apply anti-corrosion, NO CHANGE. WTF. Is it the starter? Failing to engage? I can jump power to it, but haven't done that yet. If it was that, why does that crank with a jump? Is the pertronix being flaky and shorting out the start circuit somehow? Why is starting circuit intermittent? Is it Neutral Safety switch? Doesn't start if I move to neural or any other gear. Why no radio with key-on? Is the starting switch worn out/mal-adjusted? I am virtually certain there are no fuel, air problems. If I go jump the car everything works. So weird. Help. I suck at electrical stuff, need some help if you have any ideas.

Ya know what. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the problem is not the fan- it’s the shroud. I see a lot of folks switch to electric fans because the original fan “isn’t good enough”. Often people ignore the shroud. First thing I would try is put a good shroud on the original fan - it makes a HUGE difference in how much cooling you get from the fan. Look at all those electric fans that work great. Best shrouds I have ever seen! They close off the whole radiator area and duct ALL air to the fan blades. If you have a fan that doesn’t have a shroud, you are probably effectively using maybe 3/4 of the total area of the fan diameter. However, if you have a shroud that controls the airflow over all the radiator fins- you are probably getting effective cooling from 3/4 of the area of the radiator. doing a little math based on the above assumptions: radiator area for 18x24 radiator: 432 square inches let’s say you have an unshrouded fan of 18in diameter on the same radiator: Pi*(9in)^2 = 254 square inches By not ducting ALL of the radiator area through the fan your effective cooling area is almost reduced in half! 3/4 * 432 in^2 = 324in^2 3/4 * 254 in^2 = 190 in^2 This says that non-ducted fan is less than 60% the effectivity of a ducted fan. So, It doesn’t matter near as much whether the fan is electric or belt driven. What matters is how much. First criticism folks will throw at this is “but electric fans run full speed all the time but belt driven slow down at idle - so not as much airflow” my response to that is that an idling engine clearly needs less cooling at idle, and high rpm engines need more. If your engine is at high speed you have fan air plus driving speed airflow- you have plenty of cooling. So the limiting case becomes idling in a hot environment. If you have enough cooling at idle, you will be good everywhere. I will put it out there for a beer bet that Shrouded fans that are belt driven produce enough cooling with stock equipment. But if you don’t have a shroud- it probably will NOT cool efficiently enough at idle, and on hot days - you will over temp. So to wrap it all up: the problem is airflow through the radiator. With no shroud, you have reduced the airflow thru the radiator to 60%-ish what you would get with a shroud, and this is the source of the problem- not whether you have fans running on electricity or on belt drive. Jay

Heater line past choke seems to work fine for me but I may be missing the gist of your question.. if the car is already warm, the choke setting doesn’t matter as much as when cold. Best thing about that choke is it doesn’t require electricity - even less stuff to worry about. And as Aslanefe says, there is a vacuum valve on AC cars to cease water flow thru this hose if controls inside set right (mine does have the original Tecumseh AC compressor on there - Rebuilt, but not hooked up right now however)

I have a 69 302 coupe - I believe I’m still running original equipment on the carb. It has the 4100 carb with fuel filter screwed into it coming straight out of the front. Small section of rubber hose connects the steel fuel line.

Awesome news! Great detective work.

And that back-end hop (or rear-end shift?).... idk, but it could be a mustang feature. Best thing I did was put KYB gas-adjust shocks in all the way around. I haven't felt back-end hop much since then - except on wash-board-y dirt roads. Anyway, best of luck. These cars have next to no weight on the ass-end, and so they always feel kinda light and shifty back-there on less than perfect roads. Hope you get her rolling under you soon. Projects that sit are the most depressing thing. LOL. BTW another good stabilizer feature was a 1in stabilizer bar up front. It dramatically reduced body-roll, which may help on back-end feel. Another approach is throw a few bags feed or sack concrete in the back - a little weight goes a long way. haha

well, here's a thought. If you've got a good frame under there with the global west rails, and it's solid, maybe consider just going with it as is instead of trying to improve. There is always more you can do to try to improve, but is it really needed? A car guy generally needs a car that rolls, so what's the best path back to getting the car moving again? I'm frequently stuck in this conundrum - maybe I'll keep her down another few months while I do all this other stuff... time as taught me that I like the car drivable. Now if you skip the frame improvement, you've got it on a beautiful lift, go thru and remove all the rust spots, clean the bottom, and I rattle-canned truckbed liner under there, and I really love how hard and protective that coating is on the bottom is now. Put the stuff back in and get her rolling. A car in a constant state of improvement doesn't roll much. Do good work everywhere you are working, and maybe fight the urge to improve things everywhere. I sure have to. My car rolls again (5 yrs it was down for restore!) it's not perfect, but damn I love hitting the streets with it more than having all these other things I need to do before I can drive it again....

alright SHELBY.. give it up. Looks like there is more than one in that series......

If it's an original style carb you should have a spacer. The spacer has an important vacuum port on it as a main source of vacuum for the car. That might not be needed if you have tapped the intake for this vacuum somewhere else. One of the things that happened to me was the secondary throttle diapraghm at the end of the throttle linkage (front side of carburetor) had a broken seal. This allowed fuel to leak out of my carburetor through the cap covering the diaphragm, and as luck would have it it pools on the top of the intake. This shocked me when I first found the problem, and made me concerned a fire could develop easily. It is designed such that when this diaphragm fails, gas leaks out of the carb and drips down onto the intake - it's really kind of surprising to me that is the case. Anyway, the diaphragm looks like this: and is behind a cover at the end of the throttle linkage that looks like this: You can see the small hole at the bottom center. Fuel will drain out there when the diaphragm is broken. It creates a mess, and I feel like its a dangerous mess. Your problem maybe something different, but if you have a standard carb, and are using typical 10% ethanol gas, and you are finding liquid fuel (or partially evaporated fuel) on your intake it could be this diaphragm. It seems like you would notice the lack of extra punch when this fails, but I didn't notice with normal driving - I just found fuel on top of the engine while I was out. I cleaned it up and went home. later than evening I went to check it and it had pooled more fuel (drained out of the carb when I parked). Nice thing is, it is an easy thing to check and easy & cheap to fix. Hope you find this helpful.

I looked into that zloc a long time ago. The guy in the video showing how it goes in does little but drill & screw sheet metal on that Camero. Personally, I'm not a fan of that kind of stuff.

I agree with you both on Fords' ruby red metallic. It's especially nice in sunshine. ;-) I've got the same spoiler as @MyStang (he has some excellent taste!) although I just measured mine and I have 7.5in clearance in the center, (my car is also 100% stock suspension except for 1in sway brace which shouldn't affect the height). I've never had it scrape anything in the 12Kmi I have had it on. I do recall there not being a terrible lot of guidance on where exactly it mounts. I installed it myself, and it was the devil to align and keep even. Anyway, you can get this one up to 7.5in clearance, I'm satisfied with the mounting.

"Hail Henry's"

I bought this one on RockAuto.com: https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=1140173&cc=1132399&jsn=12 Mainly because it said "Professional" & it was SHINY - just being honest....

Hah yes. He's definitely got "the knack". I lived with that annoyance for quite while and never would have come up with that one either. His systems understanding for both old and new really made the difference. Fortunately, he is gainfully employed designing and certifying life support systems for the Astronauts, so he is definitely one of the 1%'ers. He has a couple of old Porche's and some old motorcycles, so he's got lots of experience in old car stuff. Combine that with his high tech skills, and he's a great resource. Everyone should have a buddy like that! Jay

OK, I am going to go throw a weird one at you. Maybe your problem is related to mine, but probably not. your problem is more likely a connection problem. However, I had a similar radio cutting out problem with my retrosound, except mine would cut out when I revved the engine from low speed to high, but it only seemed to happen when the car was fresh out of the garage. Also, if the car was brought back to dead idle, radio would play again -even fresh out of the garage. weird thing was, drive it a few miles, and this cut-out would go away. So, after me living with this for a long while, and pondering it, but not coming up with anything, a friend rides with me and sees this weird behavior and has a genius insight - he says "do you have an original voltage regulator?" yes. "well then, I think maybe your radio is seeing unacceptable voltages when the alternator is kicked in at higher RPMS. The alternator kicks in much more often immediately after the car has started after it's been sitting in garage. After you drive the car a bit, the battery gets charged up - so alternator not kicking in - and symptom stops. Maybe you should try a new solid-state VR." Freaking genius insight. Sure enough, a new solid state VR solved my radio cutting out problem completely. Now, in your case, the radio cuts out at low speed - when another electrical system is engaged. So perhaps the current draw of the blinker system causes the voltage the radio is getting to somehow change to a temporarily unacceptable amount. Car equilibrates voltages are a few moments and radio comes back on. At high RPMs voltage is sufficiently regulated to not cause a problem in the circuit. Do you have an old-style VR with resistors on the back? is a good question to ask if you can't trace it to bad ground or bad connection. Above image is what the back of my old VR looked like (I believe it is original with the car). The new Solid State versions don't look like this. Most likely, this is not your problem, but at least I stuck to the "radio cuts out" theme. Hope this wasn't too much of a thread high-jack! Jay

This shits funny every time I read it!

Trust me- that gull & I "exchanged a few words" in our staring contest. He must've gotten the message because I got home without a load.... To all - thanks for the kind words!

Saturday morning came early last weekend. Got the old girl down the beach for a decent sunrise. A few pics for anyone interested. The big old hotel in a couple of the pics is Hotel Galvez' on the seawall. Beach pictures taken down on East Beach. They put too many poles up down there, making donuts a bit dangerous - but you know a few got made. Was a nice quiet morning out with the mistress... Jay

Do you think it would hold up to constant exposure to brake fluid on a master cylinder? Brake fluid eats just about any kind of paint.

Thanks all. Nice jacking platform @mustangstofear! A bit overkill for my application at home. When that vehicle lift gets here though.. Before I go make a pair of these, any changes you guys would recommend in terms of dimensions or features to make them easier to install or use? @ralt962 You had some idea of some adjustments? Thanks all- Jay

@Brian Conway Could you post the dimensions of those? I could make a drawing from that, and post it, and folks would know how to make their own. I've never used these (don't have any) but I have wanted to have some many times.

that looks awesome. Maybe one day....

That is really interesting. I just watched this video on parkerizing: It is typically used on steel, do you think it would work on cast iron parts?

This is a really good question - I hope people have some good answers for you. I am facing the same problem with trying to maintain a cast look on the master cylinder, but nothing I coat it with can take the brake fluid it inevitably winds up seeing. I thought I had a really good solution by using clear 2 part epoxy (the shiny coat over epoxy floors) - but even this material in continual contact with brake fluid breaks down and comes off. I cleaned/stripped/derusted both the booster and the MC, and they looked pretty good going back in - and the booster has held up since little to no brake fluid gets on it - but the MC looks like hell already. Here is what they looked like BEFORE going back in: I am ready to take the MC out and go get it powder-coated since I can't think of any other way to treat the MC that can hold up. I'll be looking forward to the replies you get. I'm only sending because I think in areas where there isn't a huge amount of heat NOR brake fluid the 2 part epoxy can work.

Oooooh!! could that be the case??? Sam, you said your radiator entrance/exits are on the drivers side of the car, could it be you have a shroud designed for radiators like mine that have pipes on passenger side, but it fits upside down on your radiator? I realize I am really reaching here....