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That's the ford pickup... I'm surprised it died.
I've only had two kick the bucket in my 25 years of doing this.
They don't make things like they did in the past.
That sucks the bearings were dry also. Seems like they failed all around.
In order not to mess with what little warranty they provide, I didn't take it apart, and it didn't occur to me that it was the bearings. Might be, the sound is kind of like a dry squeegee on glass.
In the interim, I'll get a friend to come over and turn the key while I get the timing set, and try to run it with the old distributor and new box.
I decided to go with a new distributor because the timing kept changing on different days. It was up as high as 28 degrees, then down as low as 5. It was so bad that I began to doubt my timing light - new digital one with a dial to change the timing - so I had my friend bring over his trusty old Snapon light. It confirmed what I was seeing.
We did make some adjustments to the connection between the vacuum advance and the base plate, so I hope it works better now.
I included this letter with the returned distributor. I don't actually expect anyone there can or cares to read it, but it made me feel better:
To whom it may or may not concern,
Given my experience so far I don’t really expect anyone to care, but this is a pretty bad experience with MSD. I bought the enclosed “Ready to Run” MSD 8595 distributor along with an new set of wires and a 6AL box this January, and last weekend I installed it all on my truck.
It ran for all of 12 minutes. Not 12 months, 12 days, or even 12 hours. For this 12 minutes of trouble free operation I paid $843 (in Canadian dollars it was well over $1,000).
Now I get to pay to ship your mistake back to you. Considering that it will cost $40 to ship it, and based on my 12 minutes of experience, I can extrapolate that just the cost of shipping defective units back to MSD will result in an operating cost of $200 per hour. I suppose I should be grateful that, given my experience, I can only expect to use it for a few minutes every month or it could get very expensive.
Of course, I am basing this on the only evidence available to me. It could get worse. Sarcasm aside, I am particularly astonished that I have to ship it to MSD at my expense. The product not working can be ascribed to bad luck, but the added insult of making me pay for you to fix your mistake is deeply offensive. I can only surmise that your products are of such poor quality that the number of returns due to defect would impose an unsustainable financial burden on you .
I suggest that making a better product would reduce the cost of returns, and perhaps then you could afford to stand behind your product.
In order not to mess with what little warranty they provide, I didn't take it apart, and it didn't occur to me that it was the bearings. Might be, the sound is kind of like a dry squeegee on glass.
In the interim, I'll get a friend to come over and turn the key while I get the timing set, and try to run it with the old distributor and new box.
I decided to go with a new distributor because the timing kept changing on different days. It was up as high as 28 degrees, then down as low as 5. It was so bad that I began to doubt my timing light - new digital one with a dial to change the timing - so I had my friend bring over his trusty old Snapon light. It confirmed what I was seeing.
We did make some adjustments to the connection between the vacuum advance and the base plate, so I hope it works better now.
I had the same problem with the pertronix in an old dizzy. I couldn't keep the timing set. Purchased a rebuilt dizzy from Napa for $50, and it works great.
Got her started this evening, at 3,500 rmp the advance is around 35 degrees, falls back to 14 at idle. Idle is a bit high, started at around 900 but climbed to 1,000 after taking a bit of a drive in it. It still diesels on shut down, and is only showing 6.5 inches of vacuum at idle, so have some work to do there.
Having said that, it runs like a scalded cat up to just above 6,000. Rips the tires loose at about 20 mph in second if I clamp it, and is quite civilized if I gentle the throttle.
I have to put a few hundred miles on it before I can put it on a dyno (new McLeod clutch and those are their rules), but I'll diddle with the carb and get an O2 sensor on it in the next few days.
Nice! The engine I built for my highboy dieseled on shutdown too. It had very low idle vacuum, below 10 inches. If I advanced the timing enough at idle to get the vacuum up to something reasonable, say 12+, it wouldn't start when hot because it was too far advanced.
I eventually used an adjustable vacuum advance, hooked to manifold vacuum so it would advance at idle, and idle a lot better (but still lumpy as hell), it would start great because it the vacuum advance allowed it to retard pretty far, and under load, the advance would DECREASE giving it great low-end torque. Let it rev out, and the mechanical would take over and it would make a lot of power.
Downside was, let off the gas at highway cruise (4.10 gears and 33" tires), and the advance would go way up - but didn't matter because there was almost no air/fuel anyway.
As Bear who used to be here once said, it's a band-aid for an engine that is otherwise not "right" - too much compression, cam timing not right (was, for low-end), etc. But it worked great. And ended the dieseling for some reason.
I think I'm going to start by investigating throttle blade position - the high idle may be indicating the reason for both low vacuum and dieseling.
I also noted that MSD suggest installing a diode that came with the box in case of dieseling - it may be related to some feedback coming out of the voltage regulator.
Pulled the carb off and changed the oil filter. Will inspect the old one - it has about 20 minutes of running time - for any metal fragments. Just a precaution as there is some tapping coming from the top end.
On the carb - found the choke set screw was now keeping the primaries open, pictures below, so I have backed it off and reset the primaries. Will mark the idle set screw so I know where it is, and put the carb back on tomorrow. I've also taken the PCV out of the equation for the time being. I will reconsider the choke and PCV after I'm happy with basic idle to cruise operation.
Will also mess with timing and idle mixture over the next few days.
Last, but not least, I have too much oil making its way into the heads. I have restricted the oil under the rocker stand, but I have oil holes in the push rods. I will close off the oil passage under the rocker stand and check the lifter pre-load to see if it is the cause of the tick.
