A few years back a fellow firefighter stopped off at the station after a weekend on the Colorado river. Had his Chevy engined ski boat on the trailer. Said he hauled it on the 600 mile trip for nothing. Never took it off the trailer. When he tried to start it, it would start and immediately die, every time. I went and looked it over quickly and pointed out his problem. He fixed it and had it running in minutes.What was it?
Another mechanical puzzler, OT
Nov 26, 2006
9 Replies
With the such little info available (like how long between attempts, stumbbling stops or instant shut-down, etc) I will have guess a fuel problem, like a shiut-off valve being shut, but leaking.
Karl
Coil resister ?
Alex Magdaleno wrote:
Vent on fuel tank closed?
Freddy
John Poulos wrote:
Bad coil resistor (like John said), or as easy as the fix was a loose connection at the coil resistor coil or maybe ignition switch... in any event the coil is only getting power when the engine is being cranked, when the ignition is switched to the run position the coil is no longer getting power and of course the engine knocks off.
Jeff DeWitt
Alex Magdaleno wrote:
If it was like my old Dodge van with a 360, the pickup went bad in the distributor. As long as I held the key in the starting position it was fine. As soon as I let up on the key, it died. I ended up driving it a fair number of miles holding the key in the start position (as soon as I took it our of Park the starter disengaged so that wasn't a problem). Paul Johnson
You could have just bypassed the ballast resistor (I assume that when you say it would only run in the start position, that it was marginal and that the extra voltage of the starter bypass allowed it to work...)
nate
Probably so. To get at the distributor I would have to take off the "dog house" inside the van (neat easy). Holding the key ins "start" was easier . Paul Johnson
That's it John,
The wire from the resister to the coil was real loose. All he had to do was tighten it up and it worked fine. I knew the old timers would get it (:-) He sure was disappointed that no one in his group knew it, but they were all young.
Ah, I had a similar problem with a Mazda. Ignition circuit worked in the start position, but cut out in the "run" position. (electrical) Also had a Mazda that would start and immediately stall unless I could get it to 1200 rpm and keep it there, where it then ran flawlessly. But let it drop to 1199 and off it went (carb) A can of carb cleaner fixed that problem for another
300,000...I don't think those are the answers, though to this problem.Jim Bartley on PEI
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