<VV> My Corvair Stopped. Why?

[Robert Marlow]

It was a beautiful summer evening here last 
night, so I decided to go to a local cruise night 
in the 1964 coupe (140-hp, 4-speed).

The car had not been driven since last September 
and had not even been started since earlier this 
Spring.  (This is tantamount to child neglect, I 
know, but life sometimes has other priorities.)

Anyway, I start the car (I keep a battery tender 
on it and it has an electric fuel pump with a 
switch with which I can prime the carbs) and I 
drive it around the driveway to a shady spot and 
do a quick cleanup and a check of the vitals.

I then restart the car and take off for the cruise night...

... I make it less than two miles from the house 
and the car begins to miss and buck as if it is 
not getting fuel.  This worsens over the course 
of a quarter mile, until I am forced to give up 
and coast to the side of the road, engine dead.

Cranks but will not restart.

I have zero tools with me.  The tool bag is in 
the trunk, but it turns out that it is the 
“wrong” tool bag, it is the one with the spare 
parts.  The one with the actual tools in it is back home in the Rampside.

There is gas in the tank and the fuel pump still 
works, so without tools all I can do is pop off 
the air cleaner and check for fuel at the 
carbs.  Perfectly normal squirts from the accelerator pumps.

So, ever optimistic but planning to turn around 
if it starts, I crank it again.  Now it cranks 
and fires, but dies immediately upon releasing 
the key.  This little exercise in doing the same 
thing while expecting different results continues 
for a few minutes before, for the second time in 
over 40 years of Corvair driving, I call for a tow.

The very accommodating AAA rollback driver backs 
right up to my garage door and deposits the car 
from whence it came an hour earlier.

Not wanting to be defeated by this, I then took 
the Rampside to the cruise night.

So, where to begin looking?  Again, it started 
and ran for five minutes, then began to miss and 
lose power, then quit, has gas at the carbs, and 
will now fire only for the second before I 
release the key from the “start” position.

–Bob Marlow