Plug Wires

Put the new 8mm plug wires on today, and tried to time the advance. I could not find any timing marks at all on that damper. The spare damper I have from the power steering parts does have a pair of timing marks, but not the 3 marks the manual shows. Interesting. I timed it by ear. I think I want to re-curve the mechanical advance away from the "performance" settings it came from the manufacturer with. I got a full set of springs and weights to experiment with included with the distrib. Changed out the negative battery cable with a fresh on from CPR as the terminal itself was getting bad.

Distributor

Put the new billet distrib in tonight, along with the fancy 60KV coil. I don't like the coil much. And I can't say I'm super impressed overall yet, but I still have the old plug wires on there, which are not bad, but only standard wires. Also the plugs are at standard gap, so I need to pull, check and regap. I'll get a better feel for the difference in starting and running when I get a chance to corretly time the engine and get the rest of the stuff on.

Ignition Re-think

I gave the whole electronic ignition thing a new line of thinking this week. I decided I don't like the Pertronix Ignitor arrangement at all. I mean the original Ignitor, or Ignitor I. Maybe I just feel a certain amount of distrust due to being stranded when the ignition went dead awhile back. (Even though I blame myself for it.) But I know the newer Ignitor II and III are far superior in performance and fuel savings... not that this car is a daily driver or anything. I am now going with a replacement distributor. I compared prices of going with a later model factory distributor and adding a module vs buying a complete billet distrib from Pertronix and found it was about the same money and the billet is more flexible. So I'm going to get one of those. I also am going with the hottest coil they offer, the Flame Thrower HC with 60K volt output. Going to need 8mm wires to go with that, so I'll do a clean sweep, re-gapping the plugs along the way. The main delay is in getting the distributor, as it is apparently not as popular as the Chevy model. Go figure!

Repaired the bad wire on the ignition module, swapped it back in to the Chief and presto! Starts and runs good. I decided to try my run to the bank again and this time I made it there and back with no problems. Well at least I'll have a spare module if it's ever needed.

Stranded!

Well, the oddest thing happened tonight... I was going to drive over to the bank and deposit a couple of checks. I got about halfway there, and just as I was going over a speed bump, the car lost power and died. I was in a quiet residential area, and it was easy to coast over to the side of the road with room for a tow truck (convenient, no?) and call AAA on my cell. I had minimal tools with me and it was getting dark. But I could see fuel in the filter so figured it was loss of power to the ignition from the speed bump. The tow dropped us off alongside Laurie's house next to us, and after grabbing some tools, I checked for power to the coil and distrib, which we had. Hmmm... I was sure there wouldn't be. But I went ahead and checked for spark at the coil. No spark, as I figured. So the electronic ignition module was looking suspect. I checked the Pertronix catalog and the '49 Cad takes the same part number.*** A quick cannibalization and I thought I was ready to go. But still no start. What I didn't get initially was, with the Cad part 1183, the point cam requires a sleeve which I failed to transfer at first. I was grabbing the coil off the '49er to try that when I realized the sleeve issue. With that moved over to the Pontiac, it fired right up. So I was able to move the car to the garage. Whew!

After getting something to eat and settling down, I went and ordered a replacement module (a Crane unit this time). But I started looking at the failed module and found that the problem was actually my fault! (Installer error!) Apparently the red wire to the module had gotten pulled too tight on installation, and it rubbed against the point cam. Eventually wore itself through and the wire broke. It wasn't visible until I took the module out of the distributor, and since it was dark, I didn't see it until I looked at it at my desk. I think it can be repaired and I know I for sure want to triple-check my installations for this now. At least the tow was free and the driver was nice. It wasn't a bad experience at all except for when I thought I had the answer and it still didn't fire up because of that sleeve. No harm done and I learned a few lessons.

***NOTE: The Pontiac distributor can accept either the 1183 Cadillac part, or the 1187LS lobe sensor part. However, the Cadillac can't use the 1187LS because the screw hole is slightly off.

Spin

Did a little adjusting on the Hydra-Matic TV rod, then went for a test drive. I have it adjusted a bit too much now, but it's not bad. The shift points just run a bit late. Drove over to Coopers and showed it off to Bob, then got on the freeway. I found that the speedometer is all gummed up and not reading anything close to accurate above about 45 MPH. I'll be pulling that and looking for a good instrument service shop. But he drove pretty nicely on the freeway. According to the GPS in my iPhone, I was doing around 60 MPH on average. All the while the speedo had stopped at about 45 and then slowly crept up to about 53. When I got off the freeway, it stayed at 53 for awhile, then slowly fell. By the time I parked back home, the speedo was at zero again.

After the ride, the day seemed early and the weather was still nice so I decided to pop the distributor cap off and swap out the points and old coil for a new Pertronix setup. It's just the Ignitor and a FlameThrower coil. Nothing too fancy. With that done in about a half hour, I buttoned him up and put him to bed in the garage.

Pertronix ignition kit and power vent window kit arrived tonight. Just in time for the weekend!