Hi Folks: I need your help. My 1952 Chevy 3100 pickup (with a 1955 235, all stock with a Rochester "B") has recently developed a drivability problem. After many years of fairly reliable service, a few weeks ago while driving home from the lumber yard, the engine began bucking, cutting out and running very roughly while driving at about 45 mph. In neutral reving up didn't seem to help. I got the truck home, but barely. If I let the truck idle, every few minutes it would stumble and stall. It restarts, sometimes needing some choke. Since it seems like a fuel problem to me, I disassembled the carburetor for a rebuild. Upon disassemble, I found the small knurled brass retainer had fallen off the bottom of the accelerator pump and was in the bottom of the carb, along with the check ball. I rebuilt the carb and everything else looked OK. I changed fuel filter in-line between the tank and fuel pump. Since I have couple of "B" carburetors, I rebuilt another one and reinstalled it on the truck, just to make sure it wasn't something I missed in the 'original' carb rebuild. With the different rebuilt carburetor, the truck ran good for 15 minutes, but on the way back from getting some non-ethanol unleaded gas, it started acting up again, stumbling and bucking just like before. I let the truck run at a fast idle and crawled underneath to look at the fuel filter - it was full of fuel and I didn't see any air bubbles/pockets. The points looked good, with no pitting and the timing was still OK. The fuel pump is about five years old and I used ethanol unleaded up until a few months ago. So, does anyone have any suggestions on what might be going on? Thanks for your help. Richard
Man, I hope nothing other that gas and air made it into the cylinders. If you have a filter, make sure it's clean. Make sure your lines and tank are clean Make sure the fuel pump is working good. Those are the things I would be checking.
Since it did it with a second carb it may be the coil. They will run good cold and start to mess up as they get warmer. Before spending bucks on this and that I'd buy/borrow a vacuum-pressure gauge and hook it to a "T" in the fuel line and also pull the coil wire out of the distributor cap and then just slightly push it back in making it easy to pull back out again. Drive till it acts up and note the fuel pressure (usually 2-4#'s) and then hold coil wire 1/4" from a ground. If spark is orange instead of blue it's bad.
Condensors fail more often than do ignition coils.... Has this been fixed ? we need to know what happened .
No- I just put in a new coil today and it stumbled and stalled right away. I let it warm-up (difficult with the way it is running) and then all of a sudden it smoothed out and I drove about 15 minutes - ran great. Then it started acting up again, almost like you were turning the ignition on and off, on and off, etc. I barely made it home. I pulled the gas line from the tank valve fitting, opened the valve and got a strong stream of gas. New in-line filter, clear and almost no debris in the bowel. About all that's left are the condenser and fuel pump??????? Help! Richard
Classic symptoms of a bad Condensor.... FWIW, I've received some bad ones right out of the box and not Chinese trash either . Did you remember to test the resistance of the new & old coils across the two small terminals ? . It's critical depending on how much voltage is reaching the coil with the key on and the points open .
Consider trying any breakerless ignition system . I don't know if you're still running 6 volts or what but the basic Pertronix ' Ignitor ' system will amaze you....
Nate is spot on right... a Pertronix unit, be it in 12 volts or 6, will simply AMAZE you. As a bonus, is it is not visible- unless the distributor cap is off.
It was the condenser!! I dug around in my junk and found an old condenser - runs great now. In fact, with the rebuilt carb, new coil and a new old condenser, it's running better than it has in years. Thanks Nate. Richard
HEI for your 216/235/261 HEI is yet another stage better than Pertronix and this one uses your stock distributor. Glad you got it working!
I used a Deve HEI kit on my '52 GMC. Works great, although I modified it some to make it less obvious.
