The snake was running just fine when the wife and I got under way at 10
minutes past 9am Saturday morning. Our plan was to make it to the Elks
Club parking lot in Palo Alto in time for the 9:30 departure of the
Second Annual "Day Before The Britcars Meet" Sports Car Tour and Picnic.
As it turned out our tour director, Scott Fisher (local restaurant
critic and chile pepper agronomist), didn't get us on the road until
well after 10, but the snake was still running fine. In fact, it ran
that way all the way up to the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains and down
the other side, through the cool redwoods fog and rain. It wasn't until
we were cruising south on the Pacific Coast Highway that there was hint
of something amiss. During acceleration I noticing a slight hesitation
at lower rpms. Well, the water temp gauge had jumped from it's
unusually chilly running temperature of under 150 degrees during our
decent from the mountains to its normal 180-190 range. The overcast had
tuned to blue skys as we headed south towards the Bonny Doon turn-off.
Maybe it was just a little vapor lock. After all, I'd changed the fuel
pump the previous weekend. Perhaps the slightly altered routing of the
new line I'd installed between the pump and the carburetor was a little
too close to something hot. Anyway, that's what I was hoping. It was
only an occasional miss that did seem to be related to temperature and
went away above 2000 rpm or so.
But of course it got worse. The drive home on Highway 9 from the
Hillcrest Winery was pleasant and uneventful once all the little towns
where we had to stop, then chug-a-lug away from each light, were behind
us. I did have to do a lot of third gear driving to keep the revs up.
Normally I don't need to do that because the torquey 289 easily manages
even 15-20 mph in fourth without lugging down. But driving in slow
traffic in fourth seemed to put the revs right where the engine was
having difficulty.
By the time we got home the problem had a very familiar feel to it.
Several months earlier the engine had experienced a similar problem.
That time I'd tracked it down to a bad condenser ground inside the
distributor. The first chance I got later that afternoon I popped the
cap off of the distributor and took a look. Sure enough, the condenser
had slipped noticeably in its Mickey Mouse clamp. It didn't take long
to clean the muck off of the condenser and clamp, squeeze the clamp to
tighten its grip a bit and roughen up the surfaces to reduce slippage.
After putting the cap back on I took the car for a quick trial run
around the block. No change whatsoever. By then it was getting late
and because I wanted to drive the car to the British Cars meet in Palo
Alto the first thing in the morning, I decided not to take anything
apart. I didn't want to risk not having the car available the next day.
Further troubleshooting would have to wait until the following evening.
By Sunday morning after a thorough cooling off the snake started off
almost normally with practically no sputtering or hesitation. On the
freeway everything seemed okay with plenty of power and no noticeable
miss; but on El Camino while queuing up at the entrance to the meet, I
was having trouble keeping the engine running below a couple of thousand
rpm. With some coaxing I managed to back into a parking slot in the
miscellaneous section where the oddball and less common marques where
being directed. Actually, I almost got shunted off to the Austin Healey
section but I got that straightened out in short order.
I didn't give much thought to the problem for most of the rest of the
meet being well occupied with looking at other cars and chatting with
fellow car geeks. It was good to see one other Cobra there. There
hadn't been any last year. I also spotted the immaculately restored red
AC engined Ace I'd seen at the Ben Lomond Concours last month. For
those of you who where there and wondered about the other Cobra, yes, it
was real, contrary to what seemed to be the prevailing opinion (based on
overheard comments) that it was a replica. I was even fooled myself for
a brief moment. From a distance it looked like a 427 with an incorrect
rollbar. Up close it was unmistakably a 289. As far as I know, no one
is making replica leaf-spring Cobras (with the exception of Brian
Angliss at Autokraft, who just started a very limited and pricey
production run recently). This car (CSX2174) is currently owned by
Chuck Foster. It was originally sold as a "street" car but was raced by
one or more of its previous owners. At some point the car was rebodied
with an FIA roadster shell. The Fiberglass footwells were replaced at
or about this time. I'm not completely clear on whether or not the
chassis was replaced. The Smiths gauges gave it away as an early Mark
II. I also talk to Jim Griffin, owner of CSX2423. Jim bought this car
as a rolled and burned-out basket case. Currently it's being restored
in England by a former AC Cars employee who now runs his own shop. Plus
I finally got to see Mr Riley, also in the miscellaneous section. Oh,
and TeriAnn Wakeman's humungus doggie.
Finally it was time to face the music. As much as I would like to have
stayed longer, there were non car things that needing doing and I did
want to spend some time that evening checking into "the problem".
Though the car had been sitting a number of hours, it was a warm day and
it didn't take long for the engine temperature to get up to normal. By
the time I'd made a U-turn on El Camino and was heading south towards
Santa Clara, the water temp gauge was reading 180+ degrees and I had to
flick the radiator fan switch on. It was kinda humiliating to have
someone pull up along side of me at a light and ask, "is that a real
Cobra?", and then to chug and sputter to the next light barely able to
keep up with traffic. I decided to take the freeway back since the car
seemed to run better at higher speeds; plus there wouldn't be any stops.
This seemed to work okay, but the rough running was getting noticeable
even at freeway speeds. The situation was steadily deteriorating.
Probably the worse stretch was between the freeway and my house. The
engine was seriously asthmatic by then, but I managed to make it into
the driveway with a minimum of stalling.
Several more hours passed before I was able to get back to the car. It
had cooled down by then so I started it up to see if I could see or hear
anything in the engine compartment. Even cold, I had difficulty keeping
the car running. I started fiddling with the idle adjustment so I
wouldn't have to blip the accelerator linkage to keep it from stalling.
But it got worse, even as I fiddled.
Finally I shut the engine off and just started looking. One of the
things I had planned to check when I had had the distributor cap off the
previous day was the breaker gap. But none of the cam lobes had been in
the right position at the time and I was in a bit of a hurry, plus I was
sure that the ground connection was the problem. I decided the gap was
a good place to start. I pulled the distributor cap off. One of the
cam lobes was within a small fraction of a turn of opening the points.
I rotated the the distributor shaft until the follower was in the center
of a lobe. There was no discernible opening.
Feeling mightily embarrassed, I regapped the points, made damn sure
there was some grease on the cam and put the cap back on. When I
restarted the engine the only remaining problem was a 2000 rpm idle.
Now that the roadster season is coming to a close it's time to start
thinking restoration again. Maybe I'll drive the ol' snake to work once
or twice before the weather gets too crummy but I'm gettin' tired of
people telling me how great it'll look when it's finished. No one seems
to see or notice the rebuilt hydraulics or the rebuilt and retinned gas
tank, the restored wire wheels, steering wheel and turn signal assembly,
heater, pedal box and pedals, glove box, et cetera. And I've gotta
start thinking about that pile of HiPo bits and pieces sitting in the
corner of my garage one of these days.
Roland
P.S. Scott, I think the Bonny Doon Winery ought to put you on commission.
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