Ruff idling question.

[Tom Wesenberg]

The copper gasket has copper on both sides. If you use a gasket with metal on just one side, that metal side goes against the HOT exhaust manifold.

[Fred K-OR]

Here I am again guys-sorry. I did get a new manifold gasket and have installed it. But it still does the same thing it did before I installed the gasket. I checked with my daughters stethoscope and the place where I heard a sucking sound before is OK now-no sucking and I checked the other intake port and it is still OK. So intake manifold leak seems to have not been the problem.

So did some more checking and have maybe a better description of what it is doing.

When I park it on a slight hill, slip the clutch just enough so it sits there, let it idle and the engine will miss and the miss will be random. But it runs OK when it is beyond an idle. In the first item of this post I listed the things I have done so far. About the only thing I have not done is change the whole distributor. Maybe should pull it out and install one of my good rebuilt distributors and see what happens. The distributor that is in the rig is the old long shaft type.

Hate to keep asking for advise but I am stumped! Of course is not hard for me to get stumped with an A not having much experience with this sort of thing.

Thanks again guys and I am sorry for carrying the problem on so long.

[buddyholley19]

Fred thanks for sharing your problem. Just reading your story and all the info posted helps a new guy like me learn. I'm so glad we have the barn Gord

[HoarseWhisperer]

Fred, I'm sorry to hear you went through all that and did not find the problem.

I'm tempted to mail my vacuum gauge to you.

PS: Perhaps take a look at your carb throttle shaft; notorious for creating rough idling if worn and loose. Or, try a longer idle air adjusting screw if the spring is collapsing.

[Fred K-OR]

Originally Posted by HoarseWhisperer

Fred, I'm sorry to hear you went through all that and did not find the problem.

I'm tempted to mail my vacuum gauge to you.

PS: Perhaps take a look at your carb throttle shaft; notorious for creating rough idling if worn and loose. Or, try a longer idle air adjusting screw if the spring is collapsing.

BTW HoarseWisperer, I don't have a vacuum hole in my intake manifold. So may have a problem using a vacuum gauge. But thanks for the offer. I did do a compression test and all cylinders checked out at about 70 lbs.

Early on in this process, I did change out the carb with one that I at least thought was a good working carb. But it could be the carb-may have to try another one.

When doing the test I mentioned above while idling with the clutch slipping, it did do the random miss. This would sound like an electrical problem to what little I know about it. That is why I was thinking about using another distributor. Like I mentioned early on, I did put in new spark plus, timed it, adjusted the points, different dist body, etc. But it still seems to me like it is some kind of electrical problem. Anybody got any other words of wisdom???

[Fred K-OR]

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Sorry about bothering everyone again. But this time I may have really found my idling problem. I know I said that before but it looks good.

Like I mentioned above, I was thinking hard that it was an electrical problem because it would miss when I would put it under load while idling. The miss would not be consistent. So I got to thinking that rather than replacing the whole distributor, about the only thing I did not replace in the distributor so far was the cap and rotor. So I did that and wow! It looks like it may be solved! But I need to get it out on the open road to test it completely. It sounded good in the shop. It is raining in good old Oregon at this time and the huckster is a fair weather rig. So test will have to come in the next few days.

Will keep you posted (assuming you still want to hear from me again).

[BILL WILLIAMSON]

Probably spark jumping out of the #4 track in the cap, to the #3 connector strap. Look for a "fuzzy" area on top of the cap. That problem can be diagnosed in he DARK, just rev up, or Load the engine. Happened to me once, on Minerva.
If you study the distributor, on MODELABASICS.COM you can see how this could happen! This is a fairly common problem, with Model A's.
Bill W.

[Fred K-OR]

Just to wrap up this post and let people know what I found to be the problem, I did start another post titled "Success! (I think) to explain in more detail what I did to fixe it. I did find my problem with the ruff idle (I hope).

But to just sum up how I fixed the problem. It was quite simple. I just timed it correctly. If you recall I used the NuRex tool to time it. But I must have not used it correctly. Because as I described in the new post, I started messing around with the timing and that was the problem.

So thanks again for all the comments. I do appreciate you all putting up with me writing a book on each of my problems.