QuestionA couple of years ago I was driving my 1957 TR3 and it stopped running while on the way home. Luckily we were just down the road and were able to push it back to the garage. I tried working on it some and couldn't get it started again. We have since had three children come into our lives and needless to say have been a little too busy to work on it.
This car was professionally restored several years ago (previous to the aforementioned trouble) and it was and still is in really good shape. It gave no warning to anything being wrong. No strange sounds or puttering. Just all of a sudden the engine stopped.
What would be the first course of action to take?
Thanks so much for any help you can provide!
DAN
AnswerHi Dan,
Since it has not run in several years now you need to do several things now even if it had been running when you parked it.
First drain the fuel and blow all of the stale gas out of the fuel line from the tank to the fuel pump. Remove the tops of the carb float chambers and clean out the residue and blow out the lines from the fuel pump up to the carburetors. Don't put fresh gas in yet.
check the oil level and color. Any sign of brown or tan color you need to change the oil and filter before anything else.
Pull all four spark plugs and run a compression test (throttle open) and let me know the readings on each cylinder. (a compression gauge is not expensive)
After the compression test put the plugs back in and put a timing light on the #1 plug wire and a check the ignition timing to specs.
Now remove the small wires from the distributor side of the coil and you can put the fresh gas in and remove the fuel line from the carburetors that comes from the fuel pump and put the end in a jar or small can and have someone spin the engine over with the starter until you have a pulsing fuel flow from the pump then put the line back on the carburetor.
Now you can reconnect the wire (white w/black tracer) to the coil.
Let me know the results of the above.
Howard
