Projects Cutting my Hotrod Teeth (57 Chevy Budget build/revival)

Well, many with a lot of experience ask for help here.
Keep in mind the majority of assistance is coming from those watching, seeing your thread pop up, etc.
May I suggest post a new topic with the issues you’re having, get more input, etc.

Link your thread at the bottom of the post for those who are curious about what it


Friendly suggestion

 

Don't burn yourself out on it, set a goal, take a break. Go back to it. A weak spark won't fire an engine. Charge the battery. What's the actual voltage at the coil with the key on, and while cranking?

 

Old cars, I often see the axle to body off by as much as 1". My Ford is 1/2" off center, I'll attribute it to old age, dried out body mounts and a general wear and tear accumulation of tolerances.

 

Relax. Breath. Chill. Get back when you get your head back in the game. It is purely mechanical and made by man so it can be fixed by man. Take a break and collect information then get back to it. Never give up.

 

This old car stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.

 

Man, I totally feel your pain here. I bought my dad's Model A this spring, and we had just been driving it around a year and a half ago. I knew it would need a few things, but I figured a few days work, maybe a week tops, and I'd be tooling around in it all summer. Instead I worked on it all summer, and just drove it for the first time this Friday. The shit I found on that car that was fucked up, it seems impossible that it ran and drove recently. Sometimes the act of fixing one thing reveals more things that need to be fixed, effectively moving backwards. It can really get frustrating sometimes.

It sure does make the victories that much sweeter though, when you do get things to work. I've never been much of a mechanic but I'm trying really hard to learn, since I have a lot less people to lean on for help these days.

I do find with the Model A, and my own '57 Chevy, is that there's a lot of helpful advice on Youtube and the internet in general, on how to fix stuff. With the more popular cars, there's usually someone else that's had the same problem, and knows how to fix it, and shared their experience, and that has been incredibly helpful. An hour of research can save a day's worth of fiddling sometimes. Sometimes I feel kinda dumb because the answer I'm searching for is likely very obvious to everyone else. But that's how you learn I guess.

My '57 was a huge learning experience and took a long time but it's been the most reliable, easy to drive old car I've ever had, and I've had a lot. It was well worth it in the end. Keep at it, you'll get there.

 

I can agree about the youtube videos. I like to tell my parents any time they ask me for help with something technical that I also don’t know how to do “there’s a YouTube video for everything nowadays”. Recently I’ve been watching a channel called Uncle Tony’s Garage, and he has several videos covering points ignition systems, how they work, and also a few troubleshooting videos that have been enlightening.

One of the main reasons I decided on a tri-five chevy for my first “old” car is that everyone had one or knew someone with one back in the day, and their popularity continues to this day, so chances are, any issue I encounter, someone, somewhere out there knows exactly what the problem is and how they fixed it.

It’s these generic electrical gremlins that are a pain in the ass to diagnose! A lot of help I receive is just guys asking if I’ve tried such and such yet, and almost every time, the answer is “yes, multiple times”. Do you have spark at the coil? Yup. Did you try a different coil? Yup. Is your distributor 180 out? Nope. Is the rotor actually turning? Yup. I feel like I’ve tried all the obvious things, but thats what makes it an electrical gremlin!

 

I got some advice on what to try next over in my dedicated thread for my starting issue. I went ahead and got some bits from rock auto, and a couple spools of wire that will make it easy to bypass any shoddy 70 yr old wire I come across. Plan is to replace the wiring in the distributor, since it seems to be sketchy at best. I’ll also switch out the condenser, and I’ll gap the points with a feeler gauge out of the car, to at least get them in the ballpark to eliminate the points gap as the issue. (I do have a dwell meter, but it’s a 50+ years old Sears unit, so frankly I can’t be 100% sure it’s working). I figure if I gap the points correctly, I can confirm I’m close with the dwell meter, and confirm the meter is working correctly at the same time.

Then, with a confirmed solid ground at the distributor body, it should be easy to narrow down the weak spark issue as well, and confirm if it’s a grounding problem or not. Part of what I got from rockauto are a couple of condensers and points sets. They were cheap enough that it’ll be worth it to have a backup.

I also realized that when I adjusted the valves, I didn’t account for the poly-locks this engine currently has and I don’t really want to mess with them, so again, for how cheap it ended up being, I got a set of regular old school nuts for the rocker arms. Sometimes, just going back to stock is the best way to know what you’ve got.

It was also suggested to try another set of plug wires, and again, $13 later, it’s worth it in my opinion to have around, that way when I do go back up to my mom’s house next, I have them with me already if I need them, no need to go spend 3 times as much at a parts store.

It was also suggested I don’t have a good enough chassis ground. Currently my only ground is from the bat to the water pump bolt on the engine, so I’ll add a ground strap from the engine to the frame as well.

I grabbed a $3.50 spark inline spark plug tester from harbor freight too. Never hurts to invest a few bucks in a simple useful tool.

 

@RaginPin3Appl3 man oh man- 2 steps forward and 3 steps back- some days are very tough with these old cars. Every day is a learning experience whether you find out what works or what doesn't work.
Recently my car wouldn't start after it was running great the day before. A friend came over and he asked about the grounds on the car. We pulled them off (2)
Cleaned them up and added a 3rd ground.
Boom! Fired right up. We're rooting for you bud,keep at it.

 

One ground I always do is from firewall to distributor hold down tab

 

I like that idea, would give me just about the best distributor ground possible which is my suspicion in the first place!

 

Where do you find ground straps with big enough ends to fit that bolt? I believe that’s a 3/8(?) diameter bolt but I’m only seeing .31 inch generic ground straps. I suppose I could tap a hole in the bottom of the distributor body but I’d rather not.

 

I’ve never had a direct ground to the distributor, the “hole” it sits in should be sufficient, once engine is grounded, should be good to go.

edit: I’ve never pulled a distributor and had to disconnect a ground strap/wire/cable.

 

I actually robbed a ground cable off a 2002 Silverado in the junkyard.

 

I’ve a 2003 , no distributor. I’ve an ‘01 Yukon I can verify at the end of the week, bust suspect it’s the same.

 

Didn't say anything about Robbing the distributor ground strap off an 02 Silverado. I said I robbed a ground strap off one. And yes similar year v6 Silverado will have a distributor.....not that it pertains to the convo

 

Anyway as the distributor hold down tab is slotted there is no reason to "remove a ground strap" if pulling the distributor. Just loosen and slide tab back. And while embarrassingly it is my only current real ground on my engine I like that it grounds directly to the body without utilizing a bolt that has a torque spec. And I've had sbc in the past have spotty grounds as a result of different distributor gaskets. Don't worry I'll be adding more grounds to my 53 before it hits the road. Actually have three ground straps in the back seat ready to go lol

 

Will be doing that first thing next go at it!

 

Sometimes you gotta just let that pony run.

 

Sorry my man, the discussion evolved about “grounding the distributor”. I didn’t realize you were speaking of a real ground.

 

Yeah embarrassingly it's my only current real ground lol. Still need to add from block to frame and tie into the negative battery cable to core support lol

 

Alright, a couple updates. I replaced the polylocks with standard rocker nuts. Turned out to be a bigger deal than I thought anyway because not only did I not tighten the set screws last weekend when I adjusted the valves, but whatever numbnuts put these on before I bought the engine didn’t even use the set screws! That is, there are none! So they were never going to “lock” anyway.

Now, onto the starting problem…

I replaced the condenser. Still nothing.

I made sure the points are gapped at .018, so they should be close enough.

I replaced the plug wires because the ugly gray ones were bothering me anyway Still nothing.

I removed the coil wire and held it about a half inch from a valve cover bolt while cranking. It did jump to the bolt.

So then I checked for spark at the plugs using the ol’ screwdriver trick. I did get spark there but it seems a bit weak? though I’m no expert.

I also tried the spark plug tester and I do see it blinking.

One thing I did notice, could be nothing, could be something is that, while using my snap-on starter box, there’s a “test” and “run” toggle. In “test”, the engine cranks a lot faster than in the “run” position.

Oh, and, after just a few minutes of cranking it over, the battery is dead. I just bought this damn battery a month ago, but the manufacture date is 1/23. Could it be they O’Riley sold me an old ass, weak battery and that’s the issue? I have been leaving it on a 4 amp trickle charger during the week while I’m gone, and when I start tinkering, it’ll be “charged” at ~13.7v.

I’m sort of at my wits end here. What else can I try at this point?! The damn car was JUST RUNNING last weekend!

 

So are the plugs wet from fuel? I’d expect with no “fire” (even though you see it) the plugs would be gas fouled. should be evident by pulling one or two and having a look.

If the plugs are bone dry, the fuel is not getting to the cylinders.

Edit: also, unless your charger stops charging when proper voltage is sense, a week on a trickle charge can boil a battery and make it useless.
The parts store should have a “battery checker” that tells the difference between a surface charge and a real/proper charge.
Little thing the size of a multimeter.

 

It’s orange/yellow

 

I’ll try that next, once the battery is charged back up in an hour. I had been trying to just get it to cough a bit with some starting fluid since I’m in a small closed up garage. I did notice that last weekend when I pulled the plugs, they were really black, so I cleaned them up with a wire brush. I’m guessing it was just running super rich with no choke hooked up and probably a super rich mixture with the set screws.

 

Fuel wash can render the plugs to not fire.

 

4bbl or two bbl?

 

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