[Old182]

Wow - what a thread! It seems everyone in Model A-dom except me has offered suggestions - and very good ones at that - so here's my experience. This may be a long shot, but another $0.02 can't hurt the pile. We finished our coupe in 1988 and its maiden voyage was from southern NY state to Sturbridge, MA. The car ran great until we got 50 or 60 miles into the trip and it suddenly slowed down and died. With an entourage of experts in our group, we replaced the carburetor with a working one. Twenty minutes later, we were on our way again. Then, another 50-60 miles and same problem. This happened all the way to Sturbridge and even on the local tour. We replaced the distributor (one part at a time) and even put the condenser on the firewall next to the coil (where it's been mounted for the past 25 years without replacement!) but the problem persisted. On the way home from Sturbridge, I disconnected the fuel line for the hundreth time to again check for flow and there oozing out of it was a clear, snotty looking string of silicone caulk. I pulled it out best I could and we were on our way. Later, same symptom, same snot, same cleaning procedure. I had used silicone caulk as a sealer around my fuel gauge and found out the hard way that gasoline dissolves it - in a very slow but deliberate way. A thorough cleaning of the entire fuel system and an in-tank filter screen solved that problem once and for all. My point is that we blew through the fuel line, checked the sediment bowl and did all the "correct" troubleshooting but it was just dumb luck the car decided to have a runny nose at the same time I disconected the fuel line. Don't know if this helps, but if richening the mixture seems to bring the engine back to life, my money's on a fuel blockage somewhere. Good luck!