Club tune up clinic very helpful

[mleder]

Our club (Twin Cities Model A Ford Club) had a “Tune up Clinic” this Saturday. Many people showed up and there was a huge resource base of help for our members getting their cars out for the first part of our driving season. The interesting thing of the day for me was a member’s very nice car having a loss of power and a popping/ slight backfire issue which he drove to the site. A group of knowledgeable members came forward and began to work on the car. First thing checked was point gap on the original style distributor set up. They were opened a bit and still not running right. Next was timing that got checked and thought to be in the ballpark. Up next coil polarity checked, it was correct. Switching out the Bakelite distributor body did not cure it either. Next distributor body electrical contacts were shorted to the head with an insulated screwdriver and spark power was observed. The decision was to pull the distributor and place it on a Sun distributor tester (good garages used to have these expensive testers) one of the members brought and ran it for the clinic. Some thought that it could have had bad bushing throwing off the point settings or contained a bad cam. It past the test and the machine showed exactly how good it was. Next another member checked the always-blamed condenser on a test machine for condensers and it past the test. The now tested components were installed in the car and when started it still ran poorly with the same problem. Next someone suggesting shorting the distributor contacts with an insulated screwdriver directly to it’s associated plug. Plug #1 had very little to no hot spark. That plug was switched out with a new one and the car ran well. I don’t think the plugs installed were very old. Our clubs has knowledgeable people in it and are willing to help and teach others what they have learned. This is the value of joining and participating in a club if there is one near you.

[Mike V. Florida]

We are having one later this month, Tune ups and tube steaks.

[Tom Wesenberg]

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I was testing a powerhouse yesterday at the tune up clinic. It had good output until I put a 10 amp load on it, then it went into the discharge range, even after setting the field brush to high output. This is a rare problem, but I have seen it on 3 powerhouse generators I tested over the years. While running the generator with a 10 amp load I put my voltmeter across the ground brush wire terminal and ground. I got a 4 volt reading, so I knew the ground brush spring post wasn't making a good connection to the mounting frame. The best way to fix it is to scrape the base of the post and steel next to it, then use a large soldering iron to solder the joint as pictured.