Hi all,
I've been absent from the list for several years (new job, new side of
the country, etc.) but I'm hoping it's still as full of friendly advice
as it used to be.
I have a 71 TR6 with Zenith Stromberg carburetors which I can't get
started for the life of me. It's probably my own fault, as I was having
a brake problem and I let it sit for a year (it started just fine before
I let it sit). I ended up rebuilding the brake master cylinder (using
great instructions provided by list members, especially Kevin Riggs),
which took care of the brake problem. I then replaced the plugs,
points, rotor, and capacitor, gapped the points and plugs, and charged
up the battery. I tried to start it, and the starter went to town, good
and strong, but it wouldn't catch or even begin to catch.
OK, so I cleaned all the contacts on the coil, and checked for spark on
each of the plugs by pulling them one by one and sitting them next to
the engine block while turning the key. Each one gave me spark
(although not super strong or violent.) So that seems OK. From the
list wisdom I've seen so far, I believe that should point me towards a
fuel problem.
I moved over to the carbs and adjusted the oil level in the dashpots,
and made sure the pistons etc, were not frozen up. In a posting I read
somewhere, the author suggested that you could check the float bowls to
ensure they were full of fuel or possibly even pour fuel into the carb.
I don't see how to do this. Even with the air filter off, and the
piston raised, I couldn't see down into the float bowl. Are you
supposed to take the bowl off? That seems like a fairly drastic method
just to see if fuel is getting into the carb. Is there a better
method? Or perhaps I'm going in the wrong direction.
One more question. The fuel in my tank is probably 2 years old at this
point. Does anyone know if that's old enough for it to have gone bad?
If so, what should I do? I saw in the gasoline FAQ that mixing the old
fuel with twice as much new fuel might fix things but that's kind of
difficult in my driveway.
Thanks in advance,
Kevin
--
Kevin Brown (510) 885-4007
Department of Math & CS kbrown@csuhayward.edu
California State University Hayward www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~kbrown
|