Houston, We Have Ignition!
August 8, 2006
So we have gas, what about spark? On an unknown car I usually walk through the ignition and charging circuits, to the check condition of the wiring, the path and tighten connections as I go.
The terminal box nuts were loose and the insulation was so brittle you had to be careful what you moved. The terminal box to coil wire was mostly bare and touching the firewall. I "borrowed" a piece of wire from the 42 Ford in the warehouse and made a new one.
I brought a few pieces of wire for repairs but no terminals...Don't know why not??
I now have power to the movable point and the coil fires when I short a screwdriver across the open points. It is time to see if the engine will start. No go, no fire. Points are closing but not making connection. I brought a piece of emery paper for just such a problem.
I cleaned the points and now when I break them with a screwdriver the coil fires. I tried to start the engine again and this time I can see the ammeter move every time the points break. Still no start.
I had Howard roll the engine over with the coil wire held near ground. Only an occasional weak spark. After several repetitions of the same test with the same results, it finally dawned on me that the "not quite clean" points could be causing a voltage drop and the coil was not "seeing" a full 6 volts.
I filed the points this time instead of sanding and zoom, we have lift off! I know you are supposed to file and not sand but we all do it. Now that the engine was running, we retimed it, inspected and gapped the plugs, they were 0.045, and tweaked the carburetor.
The car had been stored with antifreeze in the radiator so we opted to just top it off and go. One of the hoses did not look too healthy but if we touched it we may have to do the whole system. We have a set of hoses if needed later.
The water pump pack nut had only a few turns left but we left that due to time constraints. We did give the pump a shot of grease. The rear zerk was missing its cap and in hindsight I wonder if that may have caused our foaming later.
The brakes had some pedal left but we adjusted the shoes at the wheels to improve braking. The result was good brakes and a hard pedal. Try resurrecting a car with hydraulic brakes after a long rest and you will appreciate the simplicity and reliability of the Model A.
It is now early evening and we have more to do before we are ready. Having survived all day with only an apple to eat we decided to break for chow and come back to finish. A local bar and grill served just the right combination of steak and brew to refuel us.
After dinner we returned to the shop and washed the car. I had planned to drive it home dirty as found but by the time we got done working on it our bellies had rubbed the fenders clean and it looked funny. Besides, even though the car was obviously washed off a few times over the years it was stored, the windows were really smeared up.
It's been a long day, some things did not go well and we could find more things to fix but it is time to stop getting ready to do and start doing. We hit the motel about 10 PM and I still had a story to write.
August 8, 2006
