<VV> Spooky Story

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:24 hours 07/05/2005, Bob & Kathy Gilbert wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I've taken my freshly rebuilt 180 convertible out about a dozen times on
>shake down runs to town - about 8 miles or so at about at a steady 3000 -
>3500 RPM on a two lane highway and to-date it has run very well.
>
>Today - the first decent day in a while and I decided to drive it to work
>for the first time - about 20 miles on the same highway.
>
>Got in the car and the first thing I noticed was that it was very hard to
>start requiring close to 30-45 seconds of cranking. It finally started and I
>let it run for a minute or two then pulled out of my driveway and by
>coincidence I looked at the trip meter - 666 (no sh*&t - I am not making
>this up!).
>
>Pulled out onto the highway and the car slowly dies while it is nicely
>straddling the center line! Simultaneously I look to my right and see a red
>Toyota now bearing down on me at about 60 mph! He's furiously honking and I
>am praying that the Vair will have enough energy to get out of the way. It
>did but only just.
>
>Get to the side of the road and the car starts right up. I decide to drive
>on and get about a mile or so down the road and the car dies again with all
>of the feel of a car running out of gas, not the "right now" feel of an
>ignition failure. I pull over, immediately start the car again and return
>home. The return trip is uneventful so out I go again (I am a glutton for
>punishment!) to go to work. This time I get about 5 miles when it dies again
>- same symptoms but this time I have the added "pleasure" of having a
>zillion ton fully loaded logging truck racing up behind me at about 70 mph.
>I pull over, restart the car and this time I say enough is enough and drive
>home were the car now remains.
>
>Strange, eh?


Actually no.   Twice I've seen this same thing.   Once it was a fuel pump 
in a red '63 Spyder.    The other was an intermittently failing condenser 
(capacitor) in the distributor of a '61 sedan which would get leaky and 
actually behave like the car was starving for fuel and then just quit, 
cycle the ignition switch and it would "heal up" for a bit and then do it 
again.   Eventually it got worse and left the car sitting on the side of 
the Interstate and had to be towed... took a bit of chasing around under 
the deck lid to solve that one; I'd been convinced it was an intermittent 
fuel issue the way it acted.

This '61 Vair condenser issue was made worse by the fact that my mother had 
been driving the car at the time it quit on the Interstate.


tony..