The Sheriff

Gotta time them early snow birds... Got behind one old egg-timer and it all went to hell. At one point on a blind curve he was doing 20 under the limit. Crazy as I am I aint passing on a blind curve.
 
If it ain't one thing...

Taking a trip over to the inlaws yesterday and the car died about two blocks in to the trip. So I'm sitting in front a park nearby the house in a dead silent car. All of a sudden I realize the car is silent no fuel pump . CRAP..

Called the wife let her know I was walking backfor the truck and tools. She picked me up in the truck. Quick jump out and get the multimeter and head back.

Back at the car I start checking circuits and about two minutes in I decide to jump the fuel pump relay trigger to 12v. Pump came to life. Groovy, relay isn't getting triggered. Fill the carb and head back home.

At the house I traced my wires and seams I trigger the relay off the field side of the voltage regulator. Ah no volts out with key on. Got it. Local parts house has it. Walk back to truck and go buy new one.

Put the new one on and head out for a test drive. All doing well. Until I hit about 1 mile from home on the return trip. Part throttle the car started to cut out. Odd says me. Hit the flashers and start to brake, all of a sudden the engine picks back up and is seemingly fine. Turn off flashers and continue on my way. Shortly thereafter it does it again. Flashers and brakes and the engine recovers. WTF?

All of a sudden it dawns me the VR is probably solid-state and is cutting power completely on the field side. I hit the head lights and it's fine the rest of the way home.

So tonight I take the old man out for a spin and I forget about the issue. About a mile out it does it again. I hit the head lights again and we're good for the rest of the trip.

Now I suppose I'll have to go to the other side of the VR... Or find another source of keyed 12v under the hood.
 
It's a commuter.... Ok it went commuter distance anyway. 40 mile round trip today with about 8 miles on the 70mph highway. In all I'm happy, have a bunch more things to fix now. Maybe inner and outer tie rods and definitely shocks all around.

Yay.
 
I've had more people in my garage today than when the house was being built. The wife took part in the "community" garage sale this morning. I'm working on an upgrade for work so I've spent most of my time since 04:30 pounding away on the keyboard.

Every Time I've gotten up to go out to check on the wife there's been looky-lou's milling inside the garage checking out the Monaco. I got three how much do you wants while I was out there. Each time I just looked at it and said there's no for sale sign in the window. GTFO my garage...
 
Sigh.

I'm in an essentially a no start situation here. Last time I drove it was doing great. Honestly I did so well it put me back on track to think about finishing up the body this year.

Went out yesterday morning to move it so I can put the halloween decorations away and it was almost impossible to start. Crack to part throttle and it seemed to do much better.

Tossed the vacuum gauge on it and we're at like 5 inches. Broke out the timing light and it's retarded. Odd says me. So any way. I had to throw nearly 30 degrees of advance at it to get to 15 inches and for it to run decent. I backed it down with plans of driving it today.

Went out at lunch and no start again unless the throttle was cracked to part throttle. It would not idle this time though. SO I couldn't check timing.

I did break out the compression gauge. Only checked one cylinder so far. only managed 90psi on a cold engine. Granted the mill has 130K miles on it, so I know the time is coming. Just hoping for the time being the issue is a bad timing chain. There was nylon in the pan when I replaced the pan gasket.

I know I know, I'm in denial. I just can't wrap my head around it running fine then not at all.
 
ETA; retested the same cylinder dry with my old Penske compression tester and no adapters, cinched it tight and got 125psi cold.

Not great but well enough to get by. I think.
 
You better be looking closely at that timing chain, sounds like it may have jumped a tooth.
 
I have a new one waiting to go. It's been on the list since I had the pan off in April. You find a nylon tooth sitting in the pan, you know what needs to be done. But given the situation I want to be sure before I throw another part at it. Either way it needs to be done, but if I have a ring issue there's no point doing the timing chain as the engine is going to get sent out.

If it's burnt valves then Yeah I'll still do the timing chain. But I'll either send out the heads or just buy some replacements.

I'll know in a few days. My immediate need is to get it out of the garage to do the brakes on the van this weekend. After that I'll futz with it.
 
I have a new one waiting to go. It's been on the list since I had the pan off in April. You find a nylon tooth sitting in the pan, you know what needs to be done. But given the situation I want to be sure before I throw another part at it. Either way it needs to be done, but if I have a ring issue there's no point doing the timing chain as the engine is going to get sent out.

If it's burnt valves then Yeah I'll still do the timing chain. But I'll either send out the heads or just buy some replacements.

I'll know in a few days. My immediate need is to get it out of the garage to do the brakes on the van this weekend. After that I'll futz with it.
IMO just go after the chain... you said she was running to your satisfaction prior to this and you know the problem exists. If you keep fooling around until she jumps another tooth and bends valves, I suppose you will have the perfect excuse to spend more $$ on the engine.
 
Decided to pull the carb apart at lunch and make sure the floats weren't stuck or flooded. All looked good.

Fugg it why not check the coil and the pertronix. Got 12V to the pertronix and coil. Check. Less than .2 Ohms from base plate to neg battery terminal (checked 0.1Ohms). Check. 2.2 Ohms on the primary (supposed to be higher than 1.5 Ohm). Check. 9.5K Ohms on the secondary. Check. Spin it with the ignition on check coil wire to ground. Sparks, sparks fast. But seems real weak to me.

Can I have good coil resistance and weak spark?
 
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My experience with a 100,000 mi 383 was about a day of dinking around with timing till I realized it wasn't going to be corrected at the distributor. The regular exhaust popping, which was my first clue should have been trusted ... oh well, only wasted a day.
I didn't have any "sprocket particulate" in my pan but the play in the assembly was pretty damned south of spec. It was probably the best decision I made doing that chain. She's still an old engine and a little on the tired side, but it fires off without a question every time.
 
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