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Back in 1963 Dan and I bought a '56 Caribbean Convertible for $400, only 7 years old but the sole thing that worked on it was the horn. It had a new factory engine not completely installed. Got it running, driving, and operating. AT age 18 I was interested in speed and the standard of the day was the 0-60 times. Eventually went out on an empty stretch of an interstate and had fun.

Then I decided to run the car witout the big aircleaner adn removed it and the big studs . One day I went back to the interstate, stopped, floored the gas and about 30 mph it shut down. Coasted to a stop, started it again, hit the gas, same thing.

Back to our shop. Checked ignition coil, coil wire, condenser, fuel pump, carbs, float levels, gas lines etc etc. All OK. Back to the interstate, 30 mph it shut down.

NOw what had changed I wondered. One day I was under the hood and noticed two round impressions on the hood pad matchng the air horns of the carburetors. Some trim cement on the back of the hood pad solved the problem. Now that's one thing the Factory Service Manual does to tell you to check.

We still have the car and we run it wioth the air cleaner!

Good story!

There's a similar story about a near-to-production vehicle that would basically stop when run at the factory test track about some speed (maybe 50mph?). It was driving the test engineers nuts because if they removed the hood and rode on the fenders during a test run (try that today with OSHA around), the car ran perfectly. Put the hood back on and it would stop at speed.

It turns out the problem was an inspection tag that was wired to the underside of the hood somewhat in front of the air cleaner inlet. At speed, the tag would be sucked back into the inlet, stopping the air flow and the car. Some "brilliant" engineer figured this out after looking carefully at the underside of the hood.

Maybe someone remembers the specifics of this story...

Craig