The Holley 1920 on my '71 Dart worked okay, but made weird, contradictory problems: four and five tries for the engine to stay running when started from cold and put into Drive (too lean) but starts immediately on slow idle without the choke after sitting in a cold garage all day or night (too rich). No high-rpm power at all (feels like it's running out of fuel…too lean) but poor gas mileage and very dirty-smelling exhaust (too rich). I'd been putting off repairs for months, for even in good weather I don't really have a good place to do car work. Wintertime brings the choice between a dim underground garage or a dark, snowy street. So the garage wins, but only just barely.

When I was a teenager, first messing with cars, I had plenty of physical stamina for bending myself into all kinds of bizarre positions under the hood or under the dash, snaking my hands up or down into cramped spaces, etc., but I had very little mental stamina/patience for jobs that took longer than planned (which they almost always did). Now I have more patience, but less physical stamina, so overall nothing's improved!

Finally yesterday I ran out of excuses. Didn't have a problem finding a new Carter BBS carburetor (gee... ). The fuel line mod went reasonably quickly, though I wasted some time trying to figure out why the 90° elbow fitting's threads seemed to seize partway into the fuel pump outlet or carburetor inlet. That mystery was solved when I pulled another elbow out of the box and discovered the first one was a misbox, with a too-large threaded fitting.

I removed the airhorn from the BBS, oiled and flared the accelerator pump plunger cup, oiled and installed a new airhorn gasket, and put the carb back together. Everything hooked right up to the BBS — the car's original choke pushrod is mangled (bent and then unbent) from some ignorant hackwork evidently done years ago; I've got a new choke on the way and suppose I ought to see if GPRS have got around to reproducing the '70-'72 choke stove gasket.

Lots of cranking (very quiet cranking; the one-of-none starter in this car makes very little noise) but no fire-up. I cracked loose the new elbow fitting from the carb inlet, cranked some more, and when gasoline made itself apparent, I retightened the fitting. More cranking, no fire-up. D'oh! It's an inlet needle stuck on its seat because that's where it's been since 1971. I should've spent ten more seconds unseating it when the carb was apart. Instead, I sprayed the carb full of cleaner through the internal bowl vent and started the engine on that. It ran for about 10 seconds, progressively slower, and juust as it was about to stall out, the needle unstuck, the carb filled up, and the engine picked up and ran. I twiddled around making gross adjustments while it warmed up. It was clearly running better than before, and even with the choke mostly closed the exhaust smelt much less toxic, but there was still misfiring evident.

I shut down, removed and inverted the distributor cap. H'mm. I've seen worse, but I've seen better. This was a new old stock Echlin MO-6, the black bakelite kind with the extra-wide aluminum contacts. There was white or silver dust on the inside of the cap, and the centre carbon contact was chipped/chunked such that it was making only small contact with the rotor spring. H'm, let's replace that. I went back up to my office and from under my desk (…doesn't everybody?) fished out a Standard-BlueStreak CH-403X. This is the old premium BlueStreak cap, compression-moulded from blue glass-filled thermoset phenolic, with narrow copper contacts (now superseded by the vented CH-410X, injection-moulded from blue glass-filled thermoplastic). I installed the plug wires 1-5-3-6-2-4, snapped the cap on, and hit the key. The starter gave half a groan and hitched.

Ohhhh, yeah, that's right…this distributor is missing the locator tab for the distributor cap, and I'd forgot having dealt with that last time I messed with it. I rotated the plug wires one tower clockwise, hit the key again, and the engine started right up. It ran smoothly for a couple of seconds, but then began misfiring worse than before. Also, there was a hell of a racket coming from the right side of the engine, sounded like the valves were out of adjustment, but that made no sense. Valves don't suddenly go out of adjustment. I put a screwdriver on the valve cover and my ear on the handle: nope, the valves are still quiet. The noise was too fast to be fuel pump rap, and it was growing quieter as I stood there listening…

So what changed? Distributor cap. I popped it off and saw the problem at once: the contact arm on the rotor was no longer pointing along the axis of the rotor, it had been knocked askew and was pointing at the trailing corner of the end of the rotor. I inverted the cap. Sure enough, both the end of the rotor arm and the cap contacts showed signs of physical contact. Not a hard enough hang-up to lock the distributor and break stuff, but enough to knock the rotor arm out of line. H'mm. Why did that happen? More to the point, how was I going to fix it and get home to fix the water heater? This car has a Prestolite/Auto-Lite distributor from a 1964 Canadian Valiant, so it doesn't use the regular Mopar rotor. I went bakc up to the office, dug around in my box of ignition parts, and came up with a new-in-box Echlin AL-160 rotor. This was the same as the (busted) rotor I'd removed, but with a slightly shorter contact arm (bingo!) stamped with an "X". I dropped it onto the distributor shaft, reinstalled the cap, and the engine started right up with no clacking and much less misfiring — a swap to electronic ignition will probably get rid of the remainder, when I get around to it.

I (dimly) remember having dug through the books to find the long-tip version of the Prestolite rotor, but in looking back through the Echlin book, I can't find it, so I'm not sure what its P/N or original application is. The AL-160 I installed is the one that's supposed to be there:


Interestingly, there was no physical contact between the extra-long rotor and the wide-contact cap. There's evidently a great deal of variation in the cap-contact-to-rotor-tip dimension amongst different distributor caps.

Still need to finalise the idle speed adjustment, adjust the kickdown linkage (it's too short), figure out a way to silence the air cleaner damper door rattle and do some work on the instrument cluster and steering column, swap in the driver's side underdash vent box with the good door hinges…

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

figure out a way to silence the air cleaner damper door rattle....

When you do, let me know please! Mine does it at idle, in gear. Some Copper high temp RTV gasket works around your choke pocket....I had to resort to that when the gasket on my original engine blew out. Do you still have the "frame" (the metal part with out the gasket material) of the gasket? This makes it easier to smooth the RTV around it, let it skin up, and put it on. Just don't expect it to last long.

Oh, I know how to do it: install a '74+ air cleaner with oval (rather than rectangular) snorkel! I just haven't worked out how to silence this air cleaner yet.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

"flared the accelerator pump plunger cup"

What do you mean by this and what is the purpose?

Reed put a few pieces of tape where the door contacts the bottem of the air horn...helped some. When I get some time, I'll take the vacuum actuator off the horn and maybe bend the tab where it goes into the door and try to work the little rod (hing) that goes through the door. I also have some thin cork gasket material laying around...may try that in some spots to isolate the metal to metal contact. Just some ideas for you.

Eric- you still have that extra van one barrel air cleaner down at my place. It would pop right on to the carb and be fine.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

The Carter BBS (and BBD through '76 or so, and the Stromberg W and WW carbs, and the Holley 2209) use an accelerator pump plunger with a leather cup, mouth down, at the bottom of a metal stem. This cup rides in a round cylinder with a check ball at the bottom. The stem is lifted up against spring pressure when the throttle closes, which draws gasoline into the cylinder through the check ball hole. When the throttle opens, the spring drives the stem/cup downward, forcing the check ball onto its seat, and thus forcing gasoline through a second passage at the bottom of the cylinder, whence it is routed into the carb throat. This works exactly like a vertical cylinder bicycle tire pump, if you've ever disassembled one of those.

When installing a new pump plunger (e.g. when rebuilding the carb) or when putting into service a carb that has sat for a long time either on a car or in a box, you oil the plunger cup with regular engine oil or whatever you may have handy, wait for it to soak in and soften the leather, then use a small screwdriver and/or your fingers to flare the cup so it will bear firmly against the cylinder wall rather than slipping loosely down. If the latter happens, gasoline will simply flow past the sides of the cup rather than into the carb throat, and you'll get a hesitation due to poor (or no) accelerator pump shot.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I find the rattle coming from the leading edge of the door hitting the floor of the snorkel, so I'm wondering about putting some of that cut-and-stick vinyl door edge guard material on the leading edge of the door. Should be cheap and easy to try…

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Awesome, good info! I'll be saving this. Appreciate it.

i just had a look at my '74 BBD snorkel and the door definitely sits away from the floor. it almost looks as though it had a rubber channel pressed around its edge at one point.

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

Idea: Find some small ID vacuum hose, cut a slit the same length as the door...press on. Worth a shot. It should get rid of the rattle and since the door is not resting on the floor of the air horn, help seal off the hot air from the stove around the exhaust manifold when the under hood air temperature heats up and closes the door.

I like it! I'll give that a shot.

I've also got an e-mail into a former Fram Canada engineer from the 1950s-'70s. They were the supplier of many air cleaner assemblies for Chrysler and some other automakers. I bet I'll get at least an interesting story out of him about snorkel door rattle; if I do I'll post it here.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Let me know how it goes....I won't get a chance to try for a couple of days (I'm not going to turn down triple time for the next couple of days ).

Triple time? Ahhh, I fondly remember my days working under Union wages.

I once made $1,000 in one day on a gig where my base hourly rate was something like $18. It was my 7th straight day working (doubletime), I didn't get my contractually required meal breaks (meal penalty was wage X2), I went over 8 hours without a break (wage X2), and I put in a 20 hour day.

This was when I was working on building the EMP in Seattle and the entire construction site was staffed by Union workers. The contractors and subs didn't care how much it cost because (a) the project was eternally behind schedule and (b) ultimately Paul Allen paid everyone's wages. The company I was working for choked when they got my bill, but my union rep spent a couple days talking to them and eventually they settled on the $1k paycheck. For a couple months I held the record in the local for the most money made in one day. I was beaten by a guy who ran a spotlight for a stage during Bumbershoot. The spot was about 80 feet in the air and could only be reached by clambering up 80 feet of truss and then picking his way about 200 feet along a length of scaffolding. It took him 45 minutes just to get to his spotlight due to the safety requirements of him being tied off at all times. He ended up working a 20+ hour day with no meal breaks or bathroom breaks. He beat my total only because the wage for a spot operator was about $30 per hour.

If I ever reach the point I can't do law anymore, I will go back to being a stagehand. I still have my Union card, just in case.

Sorry Dan, didn't mean to steal the thread.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Well, I tried the vacuum line with a slit over the door trick and it worked! So long rattle...