Starting Problem Solved But Not the Miss.

Starting Problem.

In yesterdays post I mentioned that the engine was hard to start and I couldn’t set the timing correctly.
This actually happened on Thursday.

Friday morning as I was walking through the shop and happened to notice one of the rotors sitting on a workbench. I picked it up and realized that the rotor that was in the van presently was the wrong one.
The one in the van, is for the old style flat cap.

The one that is supposed to be on there is for the tall cap.

The rotors are different; the one for the flat cap looks like this.

The tall cap rotor looks like this.

After seeing the difference, I am surprised that the engine ran at all with the wrong rotor.

I swapped out the rotors and turned the key and the engine started right up. I fine tuned the timing and shutdown the engine to tighten the distributer.

A Test Drive.

It was time to see how the van runs on the road.
I drove over to Highway 12 and headed up the on ramp. I put my foot in it and accelerated up the on ramp and onto the freeway.
It was a little sluggish but there was no miss.
Once on the freeway I stormed along at highway speed and punching it every now and then to  see if it would miss but it ran pretty good.
I got to Stony Point Road a drive of about 3 miles and exited the freeway. I crossed over the freeway and took the on ramp going back the way I came.
The van was in first gear and I punched it.
It started to accelerate but once the rpm’s got over 2500 rpm it started missing. I shifted to second and put my foot down. It started accelerating but once the R’s came up it began to miss and cut out. I went to 3rd and pushed the accelerator down slowly staying under 2500 rpm and it ran like it was too rich but after a half mile or so it cleared and ran just fine all the way back home.

I still have no idea what is going on here.
The only thing that hasn’t been swapped out as far as the ignition system is the distributer base. The only thing on the base that could be a problem is the centrifugal advance.
The distributer that I got from Bob has a sticky advance so I don’t want to use that.

I have decided that the best thing to do is to purchase a complete new distributer and new wires.
I really hate shot-gunning a repair like this. I prefer to find the cause and fix it but that hasn’t worked on this system so far.

I ordered a new distributer and new wires from Amazon.
It is supposed to be here on Sunday.
I didn’t know that they would deliver on Sunday.

Well, that’s it for now.
We’ll see if the parts come on Sunday.