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Hi all,
Over the last couple of months my 34 is getting hard to start when usually it starts very easily.
I always use the same procedure of pushing the choke lever up to half way on the column, plus I also use an electric priming pump if it has been standing for a while. After this it normally fires up straight away. I have changed the spark plugs recently with the correct gaps but I am a bit suspicious of the points which are still the old Northeast type and may be on their last legs. I understand that these are like the proverbial rocking horse poo to find. The coils are also about a year old.
Once started it will start up again with no problems unless I leave it for a few hours, then back to hard starting. Where should I be looking to solve this problem, fuel or electrics
All help appreciated.
Many thanks
Terry

Glad you asked where to start. If the car restarts fine then most likely the ignition is OK. Remove a plug and see if it is fouled, the insulator should be a white or tan color and there should be no blackness anywhere. Fouled plugs can make hard starting but OK to restart in a short time.

Points need replacement if the "point" of the points are pitted or "crested"

Remove the air cleaner from the carb with the choke open and look down the throat. Using the accelerator linkage "pump" the gas and see if you see gas being squirted into the throat.

Report back

....pushing the choke lever up to half way on the column

Hi Terry, probably not part of your problem but the lever on the column is the throttle, not the choke. The choke is an automatic unit, a Stromberg Model C, mounted on the intake manifold and there are no manual controls for it's function. I normally stroke the accelerator once before starting but do not try to start with the throttle valves held part way open.

You might want to check out the function of the automatic choke, I can forward some test procedures and proper adjustment but you can do a quickie test and see if the choke valve is closed when the engine is cold, open when it's hot and running, and pulls partially closed when hot and cranking on the starter.

Yes, those NorthEast points are pretty hard to find these days, but the tungsten pads on them are so thick that they can be dressed with a point file many times - you might want to just pass a file thru them and regap them just as a matter of course.

Please be assured I know how Packards are supposed to start when properly maintained! I happen to have owned an 1103 (1934 Super Eight Sedan) for many years !

Hopefully, you have friends, or can by yourself, eliminate the obvious - good spark plugs, good coil, properly working fuel pump.

Your complaint has become more and more common as gasoline "Reid vapor pressures" have risen. Especially now, when the first loads of "winter gas" are coming out of the refiners.

Elsewhere I discussed the phenomena of how gasoline's ability to "boil over" and "vapor lock" has increased down thru the years. As I noted, this is not a new problem; a review of the Packard service letters from as far back as the early 30's shows it was becoming an increasing problem even then.

Now, with sealed high pressure fuel delivery systems (todays fuel injected cars have a high pressure pump INSIDE the gas tank - pressurizes the entire fuel lines, so that with that high pressure, "vapor lock" is impossible - with the end result refiners are now free to provide gasoline that, absent pressurization, will boil away/vapor lock at the drop of a hat !

So - this suggests your problem may well be your car is out of gas ! Meaning, the gasoline in the carb. bowl has boiled away - takes a bit of cranking to bring up the gasoline level in the carb. for the thing to run!

This is why those few of us who still drive our pre-war Packards on a regular basis have electric fuel pumps, mounted as low as possible, as close to the gas tank as possible.

Remember - Packard got its fantastic reputation by delivering a superior product. Hot or cold, a properly maintained Packard of any year, will start RIGHT NOW, and give superior service.

So - bottom line - give your Packard a chance to deliver the kind of service you are entitled to, by recognizing the limits of modern gasoline !

There are probably very few people within the Packard world that drive a '34 Packard more than 1 do, more than 40,000 miles in the last 50 years. No, I don't use an electric fuel pump, and no, I haven't had any problems related to today's gasoline in all kinds of driving conditions. I've crawled along in July 4th parades in 95? F days, never a hint of vapor lock. Careful attention to regular maintenance is the key.

Bravo Dave, just telling it like it is.

Monsignors Dyneto and Kanter well sum it. This "vapor lock" blame smacks of "round up the usual suspects." I've owned three Packards over the past 42 years, have driven them in all kinds of weather on both coasts--one cross country-- and never, ever had vapor lock. Friends with old L-head V-engines; Ford products, 1935-36 Cords, 1936-48 Cadillacs are the only ones who've ever mentioned vapor lock, and that because of the location of the fuel pump, lines.
On an inline six or eight, there's enough airflow in the engine bay, and our Packards even have a heat-deflecting shield on the side of the engine.
Some good news: Today's gas is vastly cleaner burning than that of yore. Count your blessings.

ZDDP/zinc is a another red herring. Today's zinc levels were "lowered" back to where they were in the '70s and before, after too much zinc hindered catalytic convertors. And we didn't hear all this zinc hysteria back then. You can trace it to a couple curmudgeons in the CCCA with flathead Cad 346-ci V-8s which use, unlike Packard's hardened steel, a chintzy bronze timing gear. They had trouble after rebuilds, so of course, it's the motor oil. Some Joe Sixpaks w/ the usual backyard hot-rodded SBC 350s had problems after their rebuilds, and also blamed the motor oil. The internet can be akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater or Fox "News."

Let's try some journalism, engineering savvy.
"Just the facts, ma'am."

A Kendall/Conoco-Phillips engineer, himself with a highly-tweaked '67 Camaro with -- like many of our Packard engines (the big '30s seniors had the quality of a roller cam, but then even Packard/R-R Merlins have flat cams)-- a flat cam engine with m u c h higher valve spring pressures -- explained that a friend of his was the one who produced the Indiana Region of the CCCA's "Classic Car Motor Oil," (advertised in Hemmings, etc.) and that even Kendall started marketing some oil with higher zinc because, he laughed,

"If you want to stay in business, you either give people what they want or think they need."

This petroleum engineer and gearhead himself uses the same off-the-shelf Kendall GT1 10W-30 i use in my '47 Super Clipper's inline eight lawnmower engine. I use Kendall because i came of age on the East Coast, liked the smell and old color (since abandoned), akin to Packard engine green, being a sucker for marketing, but an exhaustive Consumer Reports feature compared various major brand motor oils of the same weight used 60,000 miles in a fleet of NYC cabs and found little discernible difference.

What else can we end today? DOT 5 silicone brake fluid does NOT turn into a "gel" when mixed with Dot 3, 4, or 5.1 glycol fluids. It d i d manage to ooze into a few stop light switches in a few cars, and so we had more fire in the theater. A friend's had the same batch in his '40 120 conv., '40 180 Darrin vic and '42 160 conv. coupe since the early 1980s, it still looking new and never a problem. Same in my '47 alter ego. It helps to read the bloomin' instructions on the bottle.

Um, uh, you don't "need" antifreeze, unless your car will be exposed to a sustained hard freeze, or has air conditioning, in which case, even in Phoenix or LA in summer, you should have 15% antifreeze just to protect the heater core from freezing. A Chrysler engineer member writing in the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Club Newsletter described how antifreeze breaks down and leaves a heat transfer-inhibiting film on the cooling system passages, as does soluble oil, a ridiculously outmoded practice. Just because something harks from when your car was new doesn't mean it's "okay."

Do not use distilled water in your cooling system. Mercedes-Benz issued a bulletin to their service departments in 1988 or '89 warning against distilled water, it being ion-hungry and leaching minerals, lead, solder.
Use only soft or reverse-osmosis water. Read the label. Does it say added minerals? Put it back.

Your car will run cooler with just straight soft water and a quality rust and corrosion inhibitor. Visit no-rosion.com and read their tech link for more info and no, i'm not affiliated with No Rosion but again, when i find a quality product or service that bothers catering to our dying hobby in this Chevy V8/TurboHydraMatic/retrorod world, i believe in singing their praises.

Next up: Optima batteries are not "gel" batteries. They're a spiral wound matrix. We love 'em; Cord, Packard, old (real, not midlife crisis doorstops) Ferrari owners, and know of a '41 Cad driver who got 14 years from his. I got a coupla months shy of a decade from my last one.
They weigh little, and weight is the enemy in any road car, a concept dear few old domestic auto owners seem to grasp, Packards being nose-heavy and understeering barouches to begin with. Packard did not produce batteries, brake fluid, motor oil, tires.

Had Packard somehow bucked the climate that was death knell to ALL independents and survived, i assure you your local Packard dealer's service department would've fitted your car with radial tires, better oil, batteries, et al.

Radial tires will not destroy your wheels, etc. The ONLY concern is excessive pressure being harder on your suspension. Because i carry only 42 psi in my bias sized 7.00/15 Bridgestone R230 LT radials, just 10 more than i carried in my previous Denman bias plies, and drive easily, i'm not losing much sleep.
Yes, LT means "light truck." But all these characters running 215/225/235/15 metric radials--which do NOT look right in your wheel openings, haven't the right aspect ratio -- overlook that these are SUV tires and SUVs are built on a, wait for it....truck chassis.

Anything else? Are we done with vapor lock and the rest of this malarkey, hearsay? Can we move on to interesting, novel topics?

So, what have you got? For example, over the years, i've asked if anyone unearthed SAE or other vetted papers contrasting the Cad 346/Buick 320/Packard 356;

comparing Saf-T-fleX ifs with the GM type;

the Pierce-Arrow V-12 against the Packard Twelve (i give the slight nod to the Pierce engine, while Packard had the more modern chassis, other than lacking the final generation P-A's standard overdrive);

comparing/contrasting the concurrent Chrysler/Packard/Pierce nine-main, 384-ci inline eights.

Yet never

a single,

insightful,

corroborated

word.

Let's move on, huh?

Thanks for all the replies Fellas.
I will be working on the car this weekend weather permitting and check out some of the suggestions. I don't think it's a vapour lock problem as I've never had any problems with that.

My mistake about the choke Dave and thanks for the correction.
This is one part of the car I have never touched so yes please Dave for the info about test procedures and setting it up.

Fred I must admit that the plugs were a bit sooty so it would look as if I need a bit of carb adjustment somewhere or is this also connected to the auto choke?
I will report back asap after the weekend.
T

Terry, attached is the information on how to set up the Stromberg Model C automatic choke. IMO it's simply the best automatic choke ever - I cleaned and adjusted mine many years ago and it's performed flawlessly ever since. After you've got it all cleaned up and ready to install, take a little time to clean that special gasket - it's a copper sandwich with an air filter media in between and you want to gently clean the filter portions so vacuum can pass thru.

Text by the Indiana Region of the CCCA, published perhaps 30 years ago.

Attach file:

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TO SUPER8OVERDRIVE:

Well said, but I caution you, there ARE Communists under your bed.

I haven't addressed the mixing of brake fluids because I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome from typing so much about the non-existent Bendix Treadle Vac problem which is really a lack of maintenance problem.

PS. The earth is flat