The Ford Barn

Flathead Fever · 04-09-2023, 03:15 PM

I had mentioned I did not think a vacuum leak would cause hard starting. That's the downside to commenting on these things. You get proven wrong sometimes. I hadn't thought about one inside the carb. I I've even seen that happen, but then I didn't work on early Ford carbs at work. I was thinking more of a leak around the carb base or the throttle shaft and propane would have found that immediately. It must have lowered the vacuum signal inside the carb to where it wasn't pulling fuel through the idle ports. It still should have started on the accelerate pump squirts and then idled like crap. We used to always had to take those ASE and smog inspection update tests. I always thought wouldn't it be great if the answer to the problem was only A,B, C, or D. In the real world there can be endless reasons for a problem. Good job on finding the problem.

04-09-2023, 03:15 PM	#30
Flathead Fever Senior Member Join Date: May 2010 Location: Yucaipa, CA Posts: 1,492	Re: Flathead 239 still hard to start after much work... I had mentioned I did not think a vacuum leak would cause hard starting. That's the downside to commenting on these things. You get proven wrong sometimes. I hadn't thought about one inside the carb. I I've even seen that happen, but then I didn't work on early Ford carbs at work. I was thinking more of a leak around the carb base or the throttle shaft and propane would have found that immediately. It must have lowered the vacuum signal inside the carb to where it wasn't pulling fuel through the idle ports. It still should have started on the accelerate pump squirts and then idled like crap. We used to always had to take those ASE and smog inspection update tests. I always thought wouldn't it be great if the answer to the problem was only A,B, C, or D. In the real world there can be endless reasons for a problem. Good job on finding the problem.