Re: 1934 1101 engine missing

Posted by Dan On 2015/11/19 17:06:58

So gentlemen a request for further help with this sick 1934 club sedan. I have taken all of your suggestions and gone through them from swapping plugs, checking the rotor cap, swapping plug wires and checking the vacuum. I brought in another gentleman to help me with diagnosing the miss in the engine. One of the first things he did was pull the plug wire from the far rear cylinder while the car was running and there was a definite miss. Interestingly, there was a loud "snapping" noise, like one that you would expect from a plug wire being held close to a grounding source. He continued to pull the plug wires sequentially and the third cylinder from the rear had no snapping sound and made no difference in the run of the car. This was the same on the number three cylinder from the front. Since we were concerned that the plugs might be misswired, we reviewed the plug schematic and each plug wire corresponded to the numbers on the distributor cap. We then followed the instructions on setting the dual points finding one set of points with a much larger gap than the 18-20 recommended. Reset it and then fired the car back up and there was no appreciable difference. In fact might have run a bit worse after resetting the points. We carefully looked at both the #3 and #6 positions inside the cap and they looked fine. Checked the compression on the number three and 6 both were good. SO we moved to the coils, swapping the two around as we followed the recommended procedure to ground them and see what kind of spark we got. The front coil was very strong while the rear was very week. After swapping the coils figuring that this might account for the number 3 and number 6 cylinders not functioning, they STILL were not firing. What was interesting is that when we began to sequentially pull the plug wires again after the coil swap from each spark plug as we did previously, there was a slight difference in the run of the car on the 3 and 6 cylinders but NONE of the wires created the "snapping" sound again.

So here is the question:

What is that "snapping" sound we were hearing that once we swapped coils disappeared all together. Was a coil grounding out somewhere else originally?. It was a very strong electrical sound that could be heard over the idle of the engine. Why did it go away when the coils were swapped.

Second, I had the points swapped out by another mechanic several months ago. They are a mod from Max Merritt. When I review old Packard materials about setting the point, I see that they utilized a protractor of sorts attached to the side of the distributor. Can a person get one? Is it needed? Is there another process for setting the points accurately without it? If the car runs down the road and missess, could the points be so off as to cause several cylinders to be dead?

Since I purchased this car it has always smelled as if running very rich. I am now assuming it is because i have more than two cylinders that are not firing or misfiring and sending unburnt fuel out the tail pipe. I often see wet black soot coming out the pipe onto the ground. No water in the oil that i can see.

Finally, can anyone direct me to a page where I can read how to walk through how to time this engine. I purchased the car after a major rebuild by the previous owner. This missing has been an ongong problem. I have a concern that there is a possibility that the distributor was reinstalled into the car incorrectly. I say this as for it to run half way well the distributor is turned such that the clip on the left side of the distributor cap is rubbing against the side of the rear coil. I have looked at alot of pictures of this engine to see if that is accurate and cannot tell. Seems odd that a clip would rub against the rear coil if the distributor was installed correctly.