QuestionMy question is in many parts so take a deep breath before reading. I have had my Rambler for about 4 years now and it has been my daily driver for most of that. When I first got it I made a thorough effort to kill off rust and prevent more and then made sure it was a trustworthy car.
Even them it seemed difficult to get the car tuned up to be on recommended specs, but it ran well. I wondered then if maybe it had a distributor from the flathead version of the same size Rambler engine.
2 years ago, on Christmas Eve the head gasket blew at the rearmost point behind the last cylinder. A friend honed the head and 3 gaskets later I was back on the road. One gasket was bad, one was squished as I slipped trying to get the head on the water pump connection. During reassembly I sheared off the head of one of the bolts for the intake manifold. I made a mess trying to get it out and a local garage cleaned it out and pinned a stud in place. I have never had too much faith in that repair because it feels flimsy like it would keep turning and turning if I tried. That bolt is one of the ones that holds the carb linkage brace in place. Another bolt closer to the front is headless too. The vacuum is good though and I learned a lesson about cheap hardware.
For some time I was going through point sets because the cam block was wearing so much. About every 500 miles the car wouldn't run and I'd have to get out and set the points again to accommodate the wear. I now buy better point sets with the felt oiler attached but still have to keep it in mind. I have discovered too that I have to set the point gap much wider to get the dwell to be on spec. The ignition timing seems difficult to keep on spec as well.
I replaced the carb with a rebuilt one because the old one would not keep its adjustments either, but the new one has never had a working choke no matter what I did to adjust it.
This past fall the car was running fine and seemed to enjoy the highway speeds on a 500 mile round trip to visit a friend in PA. One the way back it was raining hard and I was proud of those vacuum wipers. Ever since that trip though the car has been difficult. I did a tune up and it was OK, but wouldn't run smooth at idle. Finally for lack of any better ideas I increased the idle so it wouldn't shake so violently and stall at lights. The alternator is only about a year old and the belt is fine, but the ALT light comes on as it still sputters and threatens to stall at lights. The valves clatter quite a bit on acceleration and up hills and that adjustment doesn't seem to last either.
Then, I have noticed that the coolant level seems to get lower without any apparent leaks and is a murky muddy slimy brown. I suspect that there is a leak in the head and oil is slowly getting mixed in. Since the oil pressure is higher than the coolant pressure is it likely that oil would seep into the coolant faster than the coolant would mix with the oil? There is a can of stop leak added to the coolant from about a year ago when I noticed that the head was leaking where it met the block. I retorqued the head then and adj'd the valves again at that time.
The car has about 69,000 miles on it. It doesn't run hot and the transmission shifts nicely too. It is in nice enough shape that I believe the 69K, but you never know. How can I reasonably approach getting this back in dependable motion again, I really like the car and I am not put off by little discomforts, but I would like to have more faith in it getting me home from further than 10 miles away. It is a good car but I feel as if its growing problems are ganging up on me and I don't know how to effectively tackle it all.
Thank you for any ideas and suggestions. I am on the verge of getting another car so I can give this a rest before I kill it off for good, but hope to save it and keep on driving it as my primary vehicle.
Answer1) by a new or remanufactured distributor.
2)Find a qualified mechanic to adjust the carburetor. If you have never done it before, it's more involved than what I can try to explain here.
3)The old alternators were prone to have the rectifier bridge go bad.
4)It sounds like you have iginition ping. This should be corrected when you replace the distributor and properly adjust the timing.
5)Perform a cylinder leakage test to determine the mechanical qualtiy of the engine.
6) good luck
