Contaminated Fuel Issue?

[Butch Edison <waedison@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I did some adjustment on the throttle kickdown linkage on the torqueflite on my 64 Sport Fury 383, 4/bbl, thought I'd take it out for a test drive. Fuel gauge was on empty, not something I normally let happen, and had no sta-bil in it, again something I don't normally let happen. Put in 10 gallons of what passes for high-test and hit the road. As soon as I kicked it to test the passing gear, the car started popping, backfiring, trying to stall. I thought, well, if there is some water in the fuel, I'll "drive it out". That actually seemed to work. After a few minutes, the car ran smoothly through some foot brake burnouts, pedal to the metal to about 70 mph. Then it started having problems again and they did not go away. The backfiring and sluggish acceleration continue. 



I thought about fuel and the distributor as possible causes, as I'd recently changed out my single point for a dual point distributor, provided by a good friend on the forum. I had not driven the car with the new distributor, but had hand-revved it extensively in the shop and it seemed to be fine....but it wasn't under load. 



I decided to start with contaminated fuel. Although in a heated garage, maybe enough condensation developed in the tank to create a problem. Or maybe with there being so little fuel in the tank, when I hit it with the alcohol-enhanced gas we have to use here during the winter, the alcohol kicked some crud loose in the bottom of the tank. Or just maybe....I got a bad slug of gas from the station. Anyway, I got a new fuel filter and proceded to siphon the gas out. Hmmm, you know what? There is apparently a spring assisted swing gate at the bottom of the filler tube, probably to stop spash-back from the pump as you fill the tank. Well, try as I might, I could only get 1/2 the fuel out via the filler tube, so put the car on the lift, attached the siphon hose to the inlet nipple to the tank and sucked it dry. Next, I'm going to get 5 gallons of high-test from a different gas station, change the fuel filter, and see if that cures the problem. 



Questions: 



1. My parts store guy told me that if this doesn't cure the problem, I should take the carb apart, empty the floats ( float bowls maybe), clean the carb thoroughly, try it again. Does this mean just taking the top off the carb while it's still mounted to the manifold or should I take it completely off? Thoughts? Advice? The last time I did something like this was about 45 years ago. 



2. I noticed that the metal tube coming off the gas tank to the rubber fuel line is 5/16" OD while the metal fuel line OD is 3/8". I had some new 3/8" rubber fuel line to replace the old (probably original) rubber line that joins the gas tank to the solid fuel line, but didn't use it because it just felt too loose. The solid 5/16" line coming off the fuel tank does have a double flare on the end, so maybe I'm just being paranoid, that a 3/8" rubber hose rated for gas is just fine? Appreciate any comments. 



So, my plan to so eliminate fuel as an issue, going the route I described. If that doesn't work, I'll reinstall the single point distributor and see if that fixes things. If that doesn't work, well I'm not going there just yet. 



Thanks all. Appreciate the forum and the sound advice we can get here. /Butch/ Ferndale, WA
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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