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1951 Pontiac Chieftain


PhilA

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Cabin fan blower motor decided to throw in the towel today.

That's annoying because this weather is needed to clear the windows of mist in the early morning.

I think I'm going to push my focus back onto the Plymouth, and just do maintenance items on the Chieftain.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Plenty of driving lately. Gearbox had resumed being an ass so I'm waiting on a replacement valve block.

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However, I've been chasing an intermittent misfire for a while. Know it's ignition related because the tach would jump about.

Twisting the ignition key yesterday I noticed the lights would flicker.

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Pulled the switch apart. All burned and dirty inside. 

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Cleaned that all up, polished.

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Added some dielectric grease and reassembled it all.

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Now, no matter where the switch is on its arc, the volt meter stays stable. Hopefully that'll help.

 

Phil

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been doing a bunch of miles in the Chieftain recently, quite a lot of which are at highway speeds.

At 52, everything's quiet but 55 the exhaust has a very loud drone. Nobody wants to travel at 52 so I went out and bought another muffler.

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Same as the front, AutoZone's $27 glasspack. Significant difference now. Around town it has a nice bass note but on the highway the loudest thing now is the gearbox. For the size of it, you'd expect zero difference but I'm surprised at how much of a change it's made.

Phil

 

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The car started running like a turd today, bucking and cutting out, popping and snapping.

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Tonight, out came the scope.

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Started looking at traces from the CB side of the coil. That one above is mostly ok, a nice discharge curve but shows a little high resistance on the plug/wire.

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This one however isn't clean and is indicating a problem:

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Yup, like I thought, distributor cap is failing. New cap time.

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