I have a '74 3500 auto with a rear mounted facet fuel pump using a mechanical ignition. This is the first P6 I have owned and I am not a competent mechanic but I am keen to learn. The plan is to do as much of the work on the car as I can.
After successfully completing an Epic 24hr 800 mile journey to my home in France he promptly broke down. Driving home from work, with a full tank of fuel he was running fine. The engine temp was good, just getting into the green when I pulled out onto a roundabout from stand still and experienced a sudden loss of power and the engine stalled. It was sudden, there was no misfiring or any other symptoms leading up to it. The engine turns over fine but does not fire. Initially I suspected vapour lock so I let the engine cool down, but nothing changed.
So this is what I have checked so far:
Fuel pump is working (it is noisy), there is no strong petrol smell around the car so I don’t think it’s a leak.
There is a spark from the coil’s HT lead, although not that strong however I have no experience so not sure how strong it should be. It has Lucas HT leads which have a very high resistance reading on my multimeter - I don’t remember the figure, but it did make me raise an eyebrow.
Distributer is not damp and contacts seem OK.
There is a spark from spark plug 1 – again it is not strong, but I have no reference, actually it does not spark with a flash, rather it transfers electricity to the engine block- I tested simply by removing the spark plug and holding it close to the engine block as I do not have a spark plug tester. Is this an acceptible method?
Secondary coil is reading 17 ohms (20k setting on meter) primary 35ohm (200 setting), the Haynes and workshop manuals seem to completely forget about the coil….I cannot find a reference to normal operation tolerances and there is no mention of the coil other than in the fault finding section that I can find.
Have not tested the condenser yet, need to read up on that tonight.
This is all I have had time to do this week, so any advice is welcome, but please keep it simple - assume I know nothing. You are talking to an idiot who struggled (and failed) last night to even remove the elbows to look at the air filters -I released the hose retaining clamps and transmission dipstick securer and pulled with all my strength but could barely get the LH side elbow to move, I was worried about damaging the air filter box (which i was pushing against) so I stopped there and went to bed. Is that normal, what is the trick?
So what are the next stages of fault finding the non starting engine to go through?
Any advice is truly welcomed.
Cheers
Russ
After successfully completing an Epic 24hr 800 mile journey to my home in France he promptly broke down. Driving home from work, with a full tank of fuel he was running fine. The engine temp was good, just getting into the green when I pulled out onto a roundabout from stand still and experienced a sudden loss of power and the engine stalled. It was sudden, there was no misfiring or any other symptoms leading up to it. The engine turns over fine but does not fire. Initially I suspected vapour lock so I let the engine cool down, but nothing changed.
So this is what I have checked so far:
Fuel pump is working (it is noisy), there is no strong petrol smell around the car so I don’t think it’s a leak.
There is a spark from the coil’s HT lead, although not that strong however I have no experience so not sure how strong it should be. It has Lucas HT leads which have a very high resistance reading on my multimeter - I don’t remember the figure, but it did make me raise an eyebrow.
Distributer is not damp and contacts seem OK.
There is a spark from spark plug 1 – again it is not strong, but I have no reference, actually it does not spark with a flash, rather it transfers electricity to the engine block- I tested simply by removing the spark plug and holding it close to the engine block as I do not have a spark plug tester. Is this an acceptible method?
Secondary coil is reading 17 ohms (20k setting on meter) primary 35ohm (200 setting), the Haynes and workshop manuals seem to completely forget about the coil….I cannot find a reference to normal operation tolerances and there is no mention of the coil other than in the fault finding section that I can find.
Have not tested the condenser yet, need to read up on that tonight.
This is all I have had time to do this week, so any advice is welcome, but please keep it simple - assume I know nothing. You are talking to an idiot who struggled (and failed) last night to even remove the elbows to look at the air filters -I released the hose retaining clamps and transmission dipstick securer and pulled with all my strength but could barely get the LH side elbow to move, I was worried about damaging the air filter box (which i was pushing against) so I stopped there and went to bed. Is that normal, what is the trick?
So what are the next stages of fault finding the non starting engine to go through?
Any advice is truly welcomed.
Cheers
Russ