Dad's Kar is a Mess!
Well, maybe that's a bit strongly worded. He does desperately need new tires, though. But, on the bright side his timing is finally set right and he should have an easier time starting the thing.
I'm down in Iowa this week visiting Mom while Dad's off in stupid Paris. He and I should be skiing down The Peak at Big Sky right about now (well, a couple hours from now if you wanna be really picky about the whole Moutain vs. Central time and when the lifts actually open out there). So, I'm working from here this week and while in the neighborhood thought I'd do Dad a favor and give his car a look-over now that I've gotten wise in the ways of timing and carburetor tuning.
He's got a dual vacuum distributor just like mine and they need to be set at 5 degrees ATDC. That's before top dead center and not after. I get the two mixed up all the time because ATDC = retarded and BTDC = advanced. In my mind the two that start with "A" should go together when in fact they're opposite. Must be a mild dyslexia of form.
When I hooked up my $60 of diagnostic equipment I found that his idle speed was 1000 rpms and his timing appeared to be around 5 or 7.5 degrees BTDC. Like my car he's got the stock crankshaft pulley so the only timing mark is the little notch painted white on the front side (remember, folks, we're talking about front of the car here. That can seem a little counter-intuitive, I know.) But, that's it for timing marks. It's so you can time the car with the stock distributor and carburetor. If either of us were to put a different distributor on our cars we'd have to get out a measuring stick and figure out where the new timing mark(s) should be.
Whoever last set the timing probably treated the motor as if he had an SVDA or any other single vacuum advance distributor. Those are correctly timed at 7.5 degrees BTDC at idle. Mine appeared to be timed the same way when I first checked it, but I think that's because the guy at VW Man in Minneapolis thought my vacuum retard line wasn't working.
Yet I digress. Before re-adjusting the timing on Dad's car I turned the throttle positioning screw in until it just touched the fast-idle cam and then turned it 1/4 turn in even more. It wasn't even touching the cam when I first looked at it. That can muck up the idle by itself. Next I turned the bypass screw in 1/2 a turn to set the idle to 850rpms but the timing was still too far advanced. So, I retarded the timing to 5 degrees ATDC which mean the idle speed dropped to 700. Turn the bypass screw out 1/2 a turn to where it was before and the car idled steady as a rock at 850rpms.
I must say it was pretty nice dealing with a brand new carburetor. All the little adjustments and fine-tuning I did really made a difference. The idle was steadier and even the timing seemed steadier. I obviously need either new points, new wires, new coil, all of the above or some combination for mine to get it as steady. Mine's pretty good, but not that good.
Next up for Dad's car is a brake adjustment and new tires. I now know how to adjust the rear brakes but don't have time this trip. But, it's easy enough that even Dad could do it! =) But, more important than that are new tires. Currently he's riding on a set of "Starlite Poly Sport" tires sized at 6.00-15. I Googled them, looked them up at TheSamba.com and even Coker.com and found nothing. Finally, I posted on TheSamba.com asking if anybody knew about these tires and everyone agreed: they're ancient and need replacing. They're also most likely bias ply because they don't say "Radial" anywhere on them.
I figured something was amiss the couple times I've driven it this week around the Quad Cities here. Whenever I'd change lanes and cross over a seam running the length of the street I'd get this worrysome floaty feeling. It must be the tires folding a bit as they get torqued side-to-side. That probably means the rubber is so old the sidewalls are just too soft to support anything. The psi is good and even a bit too high for bias ply, about 23 front/30rear. So, there's no reason for them to feel like they're about 10psi each!
So, there you go, Dad. Your starting problems are most likely fixed but you've got to make an appointment with the tire man when you get back. They don't make tires in 6.00-15 anymore unless you order them special from Coker.com but you can use any 165/80/15 tires. I got a set of Republic Ultra Metric 165R15s. They're the proper size to replace 6.00-15s. Good luck!
I'm down in Iowa this week visiting Mom while Dad's off in stupid Paris. He and I should be skiing down The Peak at Big Sky right about now (well, a couple hours from now if you wanna be really picky about the whole Moutain vs. Central time and when the lifts actually open out there). So, I'm working from here this week and while in the neighborhood thought I'd do Dad a favor and give his car a look-over now that I've gotten wise in the ways of timing and carburetor tuning.
He's got a dual vacuum distributor just like mine and they need to be set at 5 degrees ATDC. That's before top dead center and not after. I get the two mixed up all the time because ATDC = retarded and BTDC = advanced. In my mind the two that start with "A" should go together when in fact they're opposite. Must be a mild dyslexia of form.
When I hooked up my $60 of diagnostic equipment I found that his idle speed was 1000 rpms and his timing appeared to be around 5 or 7.5 degrees BTDC. Like my car he's got the stock crankshaft pulley so the only timing mark is the little notch painted white on the front side (remember, folks, we're talking about front of the car here. That can seem a little counter-intuitive, I know.) But, that's it for timing marks. It's so you can time the car with the stock distributor and carburetor. If either of us were to put a different distributor on our cars we'd have to get out a measuring stick and figure out where the new timing mark(s) should be.
Whoever last set the timing probably treated the motor as if he had an SVDA or any other single vacuum advance distributor. Those are correctly timed at 7.5 degrees BTDC at idle. Mine appeared to be timed the same way when I first checked it, but I think that's because the guy at VW Man in Minneapolis thought my vacuum retard line wasn't working.
Yet I digress. Before re-adjusting the timing on Dad's car I turned the throttle positioning screw in until it just touched the fast-idle cam and then turned it 1/4 turn in even more. It wasn't even touching the cam when I first looked at it. That can muck up the idle by itself. Next I turned the bypass screw in 1/2 a turn to set the idle to 850rpms but the timing was still too far advanced. So, I retarded the timing to 5 degrees ATDC which mean the idle speed dropped to 700. Turn the bypass screw out 1/2 a turn to where it was before and the car idled steady as a rock at 850rpms.
I must say it was pretty nice dealing with a brand new carburetor. All the little adjustments and fine-tuning I did really made a difference. The idle was steadier and even the timing seemed steadier. I obviously need either new points, new wires, new coil, all of the above or some combination for mine to get it as steady. Mine's pretty good, but not that good.
Next up for Dad's car is a brake adjustment and new tires. I now know how to adjust the rear brakes but don't have time this trip. But, it's easy enough that even Dad could do it! =) But, more important than that are new tires. Currently he's riding on a set of "Starlite Poly Sport" tires sized at 6.00-15. I Googled them, looked them up at TheSamba.com and even Coker.com and found nothing. Finally, I posted on TheSamba.com asking if anybody knew about these tires and everyone agreed: they're ancient and need replacing. They're also most likely bias ply because they don't say "Radial" anywhere on them.
I figured something was amiss the couple times I've driven it this week around the Quad Cities here. Whenever I'd change lanes and cross over a seam running the length of the street I'd get this worrysome floaty feeling. It must be the tires folding a bit as they get torqued side-to-side. That probably means the rubber is so old the sidewalls are just too soft to support anything. The psi is good and even a bit too high for bias ply, about 23 front/30rear. So, there's no reason for them to feel like they're about 10psi each!
So, there you go, Dad. Your starting problems are most likely fixed but you've got to make an appointment with the tire man when you get back. They don't make tires in 6.00-15 anymore unless you order them special from Coker.com but you can use any 165/80/15 tires. I got a set of Republic Ultra Metric 165R15s. They're the proper size to replace 6.00-15s. Good luck!
posted by Chris Druckenmiller at 7:34 AM
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