I had a breakdown yesterday in my stock '62 Valiant. Fortunately, it was literally in my garage.

I had used the car Friday night for Halloween and have been driving it semi-regularly for a while.
I started the car up to move it a bit for winter storage. The car started and then, within ~10 seconds of running, it started running "oddly", then shut off completely, with no restarting possible.

I checked the ballast resistor - It was good. I never had one of those fail on me.
Then I suspected coil or dist. issues.
This car still has an OE-type points and condenser - no performance goodies at all. So I pulled the cap and checked the rotor and found that the advance plate had moved a lot.

The pressed pin in the advance place that holds it to the plate below had worked loose, failed, and had fallen into the bottom of the distributor. The Small ftratzog-shaped spring that holds everything together got destroyed as well.

I went upstairs to my menagerie of slant 6 distributors, found another usable "fratzog" shaped retention spring. I also welded the pin back to the advance plate. It was not destroyed. It was lying in the bottom of the distributor when I pulled it apart.

I put it all back together, set the point gap, and stabbed the dist. back into the engine on my mark that I made before removal. Twisted the key, cleared some excess fuel from the previous restart attempts and Vroom! the '62 was back in business!
It runs better now without any stumbles and hesitations because the timing is not moving around due to a wallered our advance plate and pin!

This is the first time I have had a failure like this on any engine in my 30+ years of playing with such things!

There is a first for everything, I suppose.

Greg

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http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Interesting. Those weird mechanical failures can drive you crazy troubleshooting them. Glad you got it figured out. I have seen a couple of those ignition advance plate assemblies fail over the years, but never in a running car.

My two favorite oddball problems I have dealt with were: (1) a horn randomly honking due to a staple in the insulation of one of the steering shaft bearings in the steering column shorting to ground; and (2) a random no-start condition due to the bearings in an electronic distributor being so worn out that there was enough play in the shaft to open the reluctor gap so far that the pickup wasn't triggering the ignition box to fire the coil. I found that second one purely by chance when I was holding onto the distributor while someone else tried to start the car.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Slant sixes and their parts are old. Most are worn. So some of them which still work could be damaged with no external reason.

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1966 Dart. 170 cu.in. 200 rwhp. 101.6 MPH @ 1/4 mile.

This reminds me of an old 65 383 newport in my family years ago. It had so much slop in the dist bushings that shaft wobble let the points only open some of the time. It did run but the with the dist off the engine and spun by hand the points didn't open any.

Weird one. Good fix. Let me know if you need a spare dist!

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Probably Not. I have a bunch. Every core engine I get has one.

One of my storage shelves up in the loft imploded from too many starters and alternators stored on it. I need to build or buy a new one for the heavy stuff.

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http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

That puts me in mind of my long-ago tipoff (literally, in terms of the rotor) to the problem of distributor caps ground off-centre.

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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 am trying to unload shelves right now to preempt any implosions!!
Related to dizzys: I once had the screws back out of my vac adv can while at Willow Springs with the 64 Dart. Let the advance plate swing around. It was pinging really bad on the main straight, but I stayed in it, and it never hurt that ol' 225.
Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

For me that system was new at april 1981.

I did the 1st ride to our country place with my just bought Dart 170 where was that mysterious slant six (stock 170, pretty high mileage). It wont start anymore after 160 mile tour. A better mechanics than me found my distributor points worn out. This made me a new customer for Direct Connection dealer here in Finland. My first bought there was the electronic ignition kit. I used that kind of ignition system until 2018. It wasnt total service free but much better than previous one with points. After 2018 my Dart distributor has only a job for cam triggering. For four years later the whole thing was removed. It made a good place to add an oil sprayer for cam gear!






Just thinking how little I have get done during 44 1/2 years with these cars.

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1966 Dart. 170 cu.in. 200 rwhp. 101.6 MPH @ 1/4 mile.