The last time we drove the roadster was to the Gilmore Museum for Relix Riot the third weekend in August. It rained on and off, sometimes heavily, all weekend, and when we loaded the car up to come home it ran TERRIBLE. Popping through the carb, backfiring, seemed to be hitting on only 7 cylinders. The car has a hood top, but everything was soaking wet. After it had dried out a couple of days I fired it up, still running sour. I didn't have time to diagnose what the issue was, but it ran so poorly it would barely back in and out of the garage. I was concerned about it, but my more immediate concern was my hip replacement 8-26. I haven't felt up to working on it, in fact I couldn't even fold my 5'4" frame into it to try, until today, so I got in, was able to reach forward to start it and stab the pedals, so I figured I'd better figure out what was going on before we load it up to go to Sarasota for the winter. I pulled the hood off, and with it running, pulled one plug wire at a time off the distributor cap until I found one that made no difference in the way it ran. Before I fired it I pulled the coil wire so it had no ignition, and it rolled over evenly and didn't wheeze by a cylinder, so my poor mans compression test told me I didn't have a lazy hole in the 276 DeSoto Hemi. Inspecting the plug wire terminal and the distributor cap on the dead hole, each was very heavily corroded, so I did what lazy person would do. I filed the br*** connector on the plug wire with a tiny file, stuck a tapered sanding roll from my die grinder in the cap, twirled it around and... VIOLA! Runs perfect now. Once we get to Sarasota I'll order a new cap and, plug wires, and can spend a few happy minutes tinkering with it, but for now, I'm happy it was nothing serious. I'm especially happy that I can now get behind the wheel and drive it, it's been a long month with no Hot-Rod seat time...
Corossion at a single terminal on a cap is ususally caused by a bad (almost open) plug wire. I've seen the terminals get real green.
Had that same issue with my Desoto 330 Hemi. I hadn’t driven my 52 for several months and decided I needed to exercise the truck so I fired it up for an impending drive. Damn thing popped and back fired like crazy. Shut it off and went through all the trouble shooting to find the problem. I was stumped. Anyway I posted a thread on the HAMB explaining all that I had done. This went on for about a week with all sorts of suggestions from well meaning members. Finally, a member, forgot his name asked me how long the truck sat and suggested I throw a couple of gallons of fresh gas in the tank. Went and got several gallons of race gas which went into the tank. Fired it up and sure enough the motor purred like a kitten. Just had a tank of stale gas. Now I keep a big bottle of Stabil laying around for all my vehicles. By the way, nice roadster.
Thanks! I try not to let gas get stale in in it, although this summer I've only run two tanks of gas through it. I run unleaded regular up here, down south I fill it with Rec gas (no alcohol) about every other time.
The Jalopy Journal
