Technical Clothspins Verses Vapor lock

I remember as a teenager I use to see the older guys use clothspins on the metal gas lines and swear by them, did they actually work or..... HRP

 

Did they actually work? Only if you wanted to dry your wet socks with engine heat!

 

Nope I remember wrapping the fuel line with aluminum foil and putting on clothes pins and still having the same problems.

 

Never heard of that... For whatever reason my car doesn't do it when I run rec gas... That's all I run in it now.

 

My '51 Ford Coupe still has a couple clothes pins on it from many years ago. Yep, still vapor locks! I did change the fuel pump right before I put it away late last fall. Maybe it is fixed now, maybe. Clothes pins will stay on tho!

Dave

 

I’m “pinned”. Found these aluminum ones years ago and put a couple on the fuel line of my coupe. Effectively? Who knows. If I sit and idle for a while on a hot day, I can get hung out to dry.

 

Wooden clothes pins are an old-school, "shadetree mechanic" trick used to combat vapor lock in carbureted engines, particularly in hot weather.
By clipping wooden pins onto metal fuel lines (usually between the fuel pump and carburetor), they act as primitive heat sinks or air diverters, helping to dissipate heat and prevent fuel from boiling.

 

They give you something to mess with and explain to others while engine cools down!

 

Man this is a very 2003 hamb thread lol.

I think this is one of those things that guys who’ve had it work say it’s simple science guys! And everyone else says it’s a bunch of nonsense lol

 

long as doing laundry with clothes pins might as wrap some food in aluminum & cook on motor

 

Someone needs to explain how this works, not whether or not it may or may not work (likely doesn't).

Vapor Lock occurs when the fuel boils and turns to a gas. The gas bubble blocks the fuel line since most diaphram style fuel pumps do a poor job of pumping a gas (vapor).

The fuel is much more likely to boil on the vacuum side of the pump, not the pressure side as the boiling point drops as atmospheric pressure is reduced. Hell, water will boil at room temperature if put under a strong enough vacuum.

Wood is a good insulator, not a heat conductor, so if the idea of the clothspin is to remove heat from the fuel line (and the fuel inside), you literally couldn't pick a much worse material, on top of putting them on the fuel line after the pump (were the fuel is pressurized, and the boiling point is raised).

 

I agree that wood is the exact opposite of what will help prevent vapor lock on a fuel line, unfortunately, with most of the people I know the facts don't matter and never will.

 

Too funny. I was just looking at a buddies 32 roadster Saturday evening with an 8BA in it and it had several wooden clothes pins on the fuel line. And, then this thread pops up...

 

déjà vu my friend. HRP

 

I believe the original thought was that the wood cloths pins would keep the part of the steel fuel within the pin, a bit cooler then the steel line not covered with the cloths pin. Hence the reason there are often several cloths pins lined up side by side. Adding a few inches of pins together may have kept the line from getting as hot, for a few seconds, maybe. Might have been enough to help a time or two.
In theory, it may have helped some, but most of the time the problem of vapor lock was before the fuel pump, not after it. Most of the time, the cloths pins were attached to the wrong segment of the steel line. Though running a steel fuel line up between two radiator hoses and trapping hot air under a hood probably didn't help.

 

I would venture to say that the clothes pins act as an insulator against the heat, preventing the gas from boiling. Rather than working as a heat sink which makes absolutely no sense.
But, yes, I could see some merit as fuel line insulators.

Haha - @gene-koning beat me to it. I agree with him!

 

At least the wooden clothes pins weren't as prone to melting as the plastic ones.

 

I’ve actually done that
Dan

 

My uncle had a '55 Ford with a y-block back in the late 50's with 8 wooden clothes pins on the fuel line. He swore the only way he could keep it running in the Texas summers was with the clothes pins in place.

 

On the way to Columbas in '84, I think, one of the guys traveling with us was spraying some type of liquid out of the side louvers on he 1034 Ford sedan as we got closer to take a look I realived the car was spraying gasoline and I got him to pull over, he was lucky, the gl*** filter had unscrewed itself and gas was everywhere, including my windshiel and sheet metal, we were fortunate that one of the members of our merry band had several plastic filters due to a gas tank that was dirty.

We got Gary back on the road and all the way home with that filter, Spence ended up having to by several more filters but a trip to a radiator shop and a over night bath in his hot tank and Spence was good to go. HRP

 

The only way clothespins work on a steel fuel line is if they are holding a damp rag which is wrapped around the line. Wood is a terrible heatsink.

 

One of the car magazines did an expose on the fabled "cloths pin heat sink" and it's simply an old wives tale. Now everyone that has clothespins on their fuel line will chime in and say their car run's super cool with them on the fuel line!

 

I did it as a kid on my 64 bonny on a long trip once, it seemed to work.

I never felt like they are a heatsink but the opposite, I always thought the wood clothspin was cooler than the steel line and helped cool the line not by pulling heat out but by the metal absorbing the cooler temp of the wood.

...

 

They only work if they have the correct part number!
KK

 

When I was a teenager I was told how well this worked to solve vapor lock, I was always a show me kind of guy. I'm still waiting for someone to show me.

 

Misinformation is traditional.