Thread: On The Hook Two

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Last week end was our club get together for our annual SLO run (run to San Lois Obisbo) It's about 250 miles north of where I live. It's an invitation only get together for the Bay Area Roadsters,(San Francisco) and the SLO, and the California Roadsters (Southern California). I went over my roadster front to back checking everything I could think of, changed the oil, ran the valves twice and I was ready. My wife had to go to a convention in Las Vegas so it was my grandson and me.
We packed our bags took out the bottom cushion of my rumble seat and packed everything away. We met 6 other club members at Denny's restaurant at 8:30 last Thursday and we all took off at 9:00 a.m. with a meeting place for lunch where we would meet up with the other 18 cars in our club for lunch, then all caravan together into San Louis Obispo.
I was 4th in line about 10 miles into the trip when my car backfired once out of the exhaust, then died. I coasted to the side of the freeway and stopped. I just had a gut feeling it was the ignition. After checking all the fuses and everything seemed fine I was pretty sure it was my distributer. The problem is you can't even see my distributor in my car. So I new I was done. Two of the guys stopped to help but I told them to go on, it was dead.
My grandson says, "Papa let's take the truck," I love this kid!
I called my wife, told her to take one of the guys from work to our house and have him drive the truck to where we were, and have some other guys bring a trailer up to haul my roadster home.
In less than an hour we back on the road trying to make up lost time. We caught everyone at our lunch stop. They were just finishing up, but they waited for us to eat and we were all off.
We pulled into the motel at 3:30, unpacked and looked forward to dinner. My room was next to Steve Moal. I had to take a picture of my truck parked next to his car, what a contradiction of cars
Here are some other shots of the run. My truck went 730 miles and averaged 18.4 mpg. I was amazed and it never missed a beat.
Ken

Some More, we stopped at a restored hotel and saloon

Other then a breakdown, looks like it5 was a great trip! Always good to have a spare!!!!!

excellent pics ken , looks like yall had a great time!

Well, the breakin' down part sucks, but ya gotta love the kid goin' right to plan B..............must be good genetics! San Looie O is a great place to cruise to.

Dave-Yes it was, we had good weather and a lot of good friends.

flh4speed-Thanks, we sure did, really look forward to next year.

Richard-You are right, there is something about riding around with a bunch of old cars. The grandkids keep you young, I think, If that's true why am I so tired at night?

Bob-He did, I'm thinking this might be a long week end for him, but I think he would go again this week end if there was another run. I got to tell you 700 miles in that thing is a long trip
Ken

You've got a budding hot rodder there for sure Ken...........nothing is going to stop that Kid. Sorry about the breakdown, did you ever find out what caused it? Nice that you were able to get right back on the road and enjoy yourselves.

What beautiful countryside too, looks like Old California for sure. Bet the two of you will never forget the trip..........I know your co-pilot won't.

Don

Don-Yep, he's a good kid. The night before we left I took the car out a ran it pretty hard threw the gears, thinking I would sort out any weak links. All I did was make a weak link. What is funny is I came home bragging to my wife how the car was running so good. So the first thing she says to me when I call for help was, "yeah, you told me they always run there best before they blow up"
What really happened was when I ran it threw the gears was made the rotor run up on the shaft, then when we left the restaurant we all nailed it again getting on the freeway. Once it started moving up on the shaft it finally came into contact with the lugs inside the cap and snapped it off. The new style rotors have two set screws on them to prevent this.
It really is pretty up there, I took 119 pictures. I hope he doesn't forget all these memories after I'm gone.
Ken

Thanks for the pictures, I've been trying to get my busted body riddled with pain moving this morning, and when I saw the pictures it makes me feel better seeing those beautiful cars plus one truck. That’s the best part of hot rodding driving with a group, and the town was awesome. Aren't grandkids the best, my oldest one just spent two days with us and we really had a good time.

Richard

Ken,
First let me say I do not have anywhere near the knowledge that you have.

I had a brand new import car 1971 I was constantly resetting the points. I took the distributor out but you could not rebuild it. It turned out the shaft was bent and that would throw off the dwell, when the engine would get shutoff sometimes the dwell was to wide. I would reset the points, start it up, it took awhile to figure it out. New distributor did the trick. If you have an extra one you could try it. Just thinking but that was my problem.

Richard

Ken, if it's not side play, is there vertical play in the shaft when the dist is installed? That sure is a funky rotor, what brand is it?....this is in the ex-Indy motor, isnt it? Perhaps you have to shim the distributor shaft if there is too much vertical play.....can you see in the cap where it hits the terminals?

mike in tucson

Richard- Thanks for replying, I don't have a spare, but I may have one soon

Mike- No, this is a Donovan, the distributor is a Vertex HEI that looks like a mag. Thanks I will check that, it makes sense.

What a great day with the grandson regardless. and the ol' truck sure fit right in with that group ! Thanks for the pics ken, very fun day it looks like.

Ken, have you had any conversations with Vertex about the problem? That unit you have is really a nice piece from what I have seen in the magazines, certainly not a cheap piece by any means. They must have some idea what is going on and I bet have seen this before.

Don

Don,
I did, here is the problem as for as I can tell. I took the car apart again this morning and the rotor was broke again. Robot and another good INTERNET friend told me to check the amount the main shaft was able to rise, I did. and it only has .005 of rise.
Apparently, there are two versions of this distributor. One is for computers that require an external coil the other like I have in my truck has an internal coil. If you look at the photo in my last post there fix for this is to use this steel ring around the bottom of the rotor with two set screws. The problem with that on my distributor is the set screws will hit the magnetic pick up when it rotates. So Monday I will get another one and put in flush mounted set screws so the clear.
But this is what bothers me. I have about 2200 miles on my roadster and it just broke. I put the new one on and it broke after 10 miles. It fit tighter than my old one to the best of my memory And how does centrifugal force cause it to rise?
The good thing is that everything on my car is out in the open and REAL easy to work on.
Ken