1965 Chrysler 383

rexus31

rexus31

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'Morning, gents! It's been a while. So my 300 has sat for the better part of a year (at least). Very bad, I know and I wish that was the worst of it. I tried to get it running yesterday and it was quite the ordeal. The gas was bad. I siphoned out the old and put in fresh (big mistake). I poured gas in the carb and it fired right up. It sounded great, ran for a minute then died. After a few goes at this and some process of elimination, I determined the fuel pump was bad so I replaced it, put gas in the carb and fired it. It ran like garbage, almost like the distributor was out 180 degrees. The gas smelled awful. The fresh must have gotten contaminated by the small amount that was in the tank and in the line. Back the the pump: it installed very easy. In fact, the easiest pump replacement I've done on this car to date. Could something have gone awry with the pump install that impacted the timing? The reason I ask is I disconnected the feed from the tank at the pump and ran an auxiliary tank with fresh gas and Marvel Mystery Oil mixed in. It ran a little better but still bad; very rough and it wouldn't idle. That's where the day ended. In retrospect, I should have dropped the tank like I originally planned but I chose to cut corners and it bit me in the butt. So...this is my new plan.
- Drop the tank and clean it out (possibly professionally)
- Clean sending unit
- Rebuild the carb
- New hard and soft fuel line

Thoughts? I'm assuming the car ran like crap because valves were stuck. I heard no bad noises: no clanks, knocks, etc. when it was running. It just ran very, very rough and sounded like a tug boat. Will I also need to have the heads gone through?
 
You might have bent pushrods, with it running like a bag of hair on fresh fuel. Same thing happened to me several years ago when I revived a '70 Polara 383 that had sat for at least 17 years at the time. After checking the fluids, I installed a battery, bypassed the tank, ran off a five-gallon of fresh gas, primed the carb, and fired it up. Ran OK for about five seconds, then I heard tapping up high in the block, and it ran like crap. Pulled the valve covers and confirmed that at least six pushrods were bent. Off came the intake. I ended up replacing seven pushrods in total. Had I pre-lubed the engine by removing the distributor and then spinning the oil pump with a drill, I would've bypassed that problem altogether.
 
You said that you haven't driven it for about a year. How old is the gas that was in the tank really? Did you put any fuel stabilizer in before parking it? Was the gas ethanol-free?

Have you checked for vacuum leaks? Possibly it's running like that because one of your vacuum lines has rotted and is leaking badly, or the brake booster diaphragm is cracked.

If the valves are/were hanging open you should hear clatter because of the slack in the valvetrain. If they were hanging closed, you now have bent pushrods.

EDIT: Have you tried snugging-up the screws on the top cover of the carb? Could be the top cover gasket has shrunk from drying out and there is an air leak there. The needles could also be hanging open, causing too much fuel into the carb and into the engine. That doesn't warrant a complete carb rebuild. With a Carter/Edelbrock, it's easy to remove the carb top cover without even removing the carb from the engine.

EDIT 2: When starting a car that's sat that long, the lifters on the valves that were open have probably leaked out their oil and collapsed. It can take a few minutes for them to pump back up with oil. That is likely part of your rough-running problem.
 
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If the whole tank went bad, the small amount of fuel that was in the carb surely went bad, and crusted up things in there. I would suggest a carb rebuild.
 
Mike66Chryslers said:
You said that you haven't driven it for about a year. How old is the gas that was in the tank really? Did you put any fuel stabilizer in before parking it? Was the gas ethanol-free?

Have you checked for vacuum leaks? Possibly it's running like that because one of your vacuum lines has rotted and is leaking badly, or the brake booster diaphragm is cracked.

If the valves are/were hanging open you should hear clatter because of the slack in the valvetrain. If they were hanging closed, you now have bent pushrods.

EDIT: Have you tried snugging-up the screws on the top cover of the carb? Could be the top cover gasket has shrunk from drying out and there is an air leak there. The needles could also be hanging open, causing too much fuel into the carb and into the engine. That doesn't warrant a complete carb rebuild. With a Carter/Edelbrock, it's easy to remove the carb top cover without even removing the carb from the engine.

EDIT 2: When starting a car that's sat that long, the lifters on the valves that were open have probably leaked out their oil and collapsed. It can take a few minutes for them to pump back up with oil. That is likely part of your rough-running problem.
Click to expand...

Unknown how old the gas was. Possibly 1.5 years. No stabilizer, 10% ethanol is all we can get here in SoCal.

The thing is, when I first started it and the pump was bad, I filled the bowls of the carb through the vent tubes with fresh gas. It ran great on the fresh gas and died when the bowls dried up. I did that 3-4 times (each time running great) until determining the pump was bad. It ran like crap after I changed the pump and (assuming) the bad gas got into the carb. It still ran like garbage after I disconnected the feed from the tank and ran a line from an auxiliary 2.5 gallon tank with fresh gas to the pump. I siphoned the gas I added to the main tank and it was not good; smelled really bad.
 
rexus31 said:
Unknown how old the gas was. Possibly 1.5 years. No stabilizer, 10% ethanol is all we can get here in SoCal.

The thing is, when I first started it and the pump was bad, I filled the bowls of the carb through the vent tubes with fresh gas. It ran great on the fresh gas and died when the bowls dried up. I did that 3-4 times (each time running great) until determining the pump was bad. It ran like crap after I changed the pump and (assuming) the bad gas got into the carb. It still ran like garbage after I disconnected the feed from the tank and ran a line from an auxiliary 2.5 gallon tank with fresh gas to the pump. I siphoned the gas I added to the main tank and it was not good; smelled really bad.
Click to expand...
When the ethanol in the gas absorbs water and separates, it goes to the bottom of the tank, where the pickup tube is. When siphoning the gas from the tank, unless you got it all, what was left would be the worst of it. :( That could have fouled-up the checkvalves in your pump, plugged the fuel filter if you didn't change that too, gummed-up your carb, etc.
 
I would start off by checking the spark plugs. Maybe they fouled out from the bad gas.

If an engine won't run fine on starting fluid or gas poured down the carb, it's either an ignition problem or mechanical problem.

Worst case scenario is a valve issue like you were thinking.

It's happened to me twice now with stale ethanol fuel.

That bad ethanol fuel can act just like putting sugar in the gas tank and it will seize the valves in the guides. You'll have bent push rods like Patrick said, but repairing the problem will be more involved than just sticking in new push rods. At the very least the heads will have to come off to free up the valves and then checked for any other damage.


Jeff
 
Hey Scott, I was wondering how things were going of late since we hadn't heard of your attending cars shows in some time.

Was you car stored outside under a cover as usual or was it somehow inside your garage? I have had cars stored outside for over a year and drained the fuel out of the tank and put in fresh, but I didn't change the fuel pump at the same time. When you installed the fuel pump were you pretty certain that the push rod was above the pump arm when you tightened the bolts down?

The first thing I would do to determine what might have happened is to just crank the engine over and see if it cranks evenly (just pull the coil wire so there is no ignition). If it is even cranking, the push rods probably are not bent.

I have had cars stored outside for over a year with ethanol fuel and I did what you did and have never had such a problem (but the fuel doesn't smell REALLY bad). Usually valves get bent when the fuel is really old and gummy and the valves get stuck in the guides and you run it long enough. If my car is stored more than a year then I would definitely drop the tank or pull everything out of the tank using the line to the fuel pump before adding fresh fuel especially if the fuel smells really bad - usually after about a year and a half it smells somewhat bad but not really bad.

Before getting too concerned, try cranking things over first and then report back.

You also have Petronix still on your car, so I personally would think that after being stored so long with out running, I wonder just how well that might be working. You know how I feel about those..........:poke:

If it cranks over OK, I can come over and help out. If not, then maybe you might want to truck it over to my place and we can go from there since then the engine will probably have to come apart to some degree.
 
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saforwardlook said:
Hey Scott, I was wondering how things were going of late since we hadn't heard of your attending cars shows in some time.

Was you car stored outside under a cover as usual or was it somehow inside your garage? I have had cars stored outside for over a year and drained the fuel out of the tank and put in fresh, but I didn't change the fuel pump at the same time. When you installed the fuel pump were you pretty certain that the push rod was above the pump arm when you tightened the bolts down?

The first thing I would do to determine what might have happened is to just crank the engine over and see if it cranks evenly (just pull the coil wire so there is no ignition). If it is even cranking, the push rods probably are not bent.

I have had cars stored outside for over a year with ethanol fuel and I did what you did and have never had such a problem (but the fuel doesn't smell REALLY bad). Usually valves get bent when the fuel is really old and gummy and the valves get stuck in the guides and you run it long enough. If my car is stored more than a year then I would definitely drop the tank or pull everything out of the tank using the line to the fuel pump before adding fresh fuel especially if the fuel smells really bad - usually after about a year and a half it smells somewhat bad but not really bad.

Before getting too concerned, try cranking things over first and then report back.

You also have Petronix still on your car, so I personally would think that after being stored so long with out running, I wonder just how well that might be working. You know how I feel about those..........:poke:

If it cranks over OK, I can come over and help out. If not, then maybe you might want to truck it over to my place and we can go from there since then the engine will probably have to come apart to some degree.
Click to expand...

Hey, Steve. Really good to hear from you. I hope all is well. Yup, it's been living under a cover outside. I've got the pool table in the garage and even if I didn't the Chrysler is too long to fit in my small (18' x 18') two car garage.

I'm fairly certain I installed the fuel pump correctly and didn't think it could be installed incorrectly. At this point, I suppose anything is possible.

I'd love to have you come out and impart your expertise. I PM'd you so just let me know what day and time works.

Again, really good to hear from you.
 
I wouldn't go into panic mode just yet.

Verify you have a good strong blue spark. If you do, probably not the ignition. If you don't, I have heard that Pertronix has had some issues with the reluctor thingy that goes over the cam in a points distributor. Saw it on Uncle Tony's Garage YouTube channel.

Nothing I can think of in the pump replacement process that could cause this unless you removed some plug wires to get them out of your way and then got a couple crossed up after.

What carburetor are you running?

Kevin
 
twostick said:
I wouldn't go into panic mode just yet.

Verify you have a good strong blue spark. If you do, probably not the ignition. If you don't, I have heard that Pertronix has had some issues with the reluctor thingy that goes over the cam in a points distributor. Saw it on Uncle Tony's Garage YouTube channel.

Nothing I can think of in the pump replacement process that could cause this unless you removed some plug wires to get them out of your way and then got a couple crossed up after.

What carburetor are you running?

Kevin
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'm running an AFB.
 
HUGE shoutout and thank you to Steve (saforwardlook) for coming over yesterday and helping me get the Chrysler running. I'm happy to report there were no bent valves or pushrods and the engine is healthy. Upon hearing it run, Steve had a feeling either the Pertronix unit or the distributor was failing causing the engine to not fire on all cylinders. Lucking, I had a spare distributor so we put it in and fired it up. It ran better, no more miss but was still running rough. Steve believed the carb was loading up causing a rich condition. We disassembled the carb, cleaned the needles and seats, reset the floats, removed and cleaned the venturi, cleaned the accelerator pump circuit and blew carb cleaner and compressed air through all passages, put the carb back on and fired it up. It ran MUCH better so we set the timing and it's now running awesome. Here's a brief video clip.



I've still got a little work to do as it we had it running off an auxiliary tank. One we had it running great, we removed the lead from the auxilary tank, f filled the bowls of the carb through the vent tubes, let the engine idle and used the fuel pump to pump what was in the tank into another gas can. The gas was dark brown, pretty bad. We ran a few cycles of adding some fresh fuel and pumping it out and got it to a pale yellow color and called it quits for the day. I plan to get an auxilary electric fuel pump to continue running cycles until the fuel coming out of the fuel tank is clean.

All in all, a very successful day and I'm very relieved there was no engine damage. Again, a BIG THANKS to Steve for helping me out. It's always better to have an extra set of hands and eyes and when that person has the experience and knowledge Steve has, even better! Plus, it makes it more fun too!
 
I'm glad Steve was able to help you. I'm certainly not surprised that he was both able and willing to help. He's one of the "Good ones" :thumbsup:
 
Thanks for the comments Scott and others. Always glad to help. I actually had fun yesterday getting to the bottom of things. It was a change of pace for me. I hadn't seen that car in several years so it was amazing to see it in its resplendent condition still and now running really well. Scott also had everything ready to go when I got there and we got it going without even having to go to a parts store.
 
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