Need some pointers on WC

I would have said not getting fuel until your last sentence about having to cool down to run right. One of my WC's has a gas cap that fits to tight and if I don't run it loose it will run for a couple minutes and die and then start up again and run for a little bit and die.

Could be trash in fuel tank restricking flow . Fills carb runs and when pulling requires more fuel and starves out. Sets and carb refills.

Sounds like stuff in the tank to me. Have had the same problem in the past, then just cleaned the tanks before using. Rust and stuff plugs the hole in the tank. When you shut it off, it kinda loosens up, and moves away.

ChuckLuedtkeSEWI wrote: ...I took the cap off and cranked it over and had good spark between the points.

Should be VERY LITTLE spark between points.  big spark here means either bad condenser, bad coil ground, or coil connected backwards.

Ok, I will check on a few things.   I have a small gas tank off of a snowblower that I can rig up to isolate the fuel system.   I will take the carb off one more time and doublecheck things.   If I try and replace the condenser, where is a good place to buy one?   I have heard on here that some people have been getting bad condensers so I would like to avoid that if at all possible.  

Another place to test is the carburetor inlet adapter screen. It gets clogged with grunge and varnish and won't let fuel pass to run with a load, but will let fuel run to idle and when the engine starves, it takes a while to get enough in the float bowl to run again.

One test for that condition is to pull the choke on when its dying. If it picks up for a few seconds its fuel starvation.

Another test is to pull the drain plug from the float bowl, and see if you can sustain a flow bigger than a pencil lead. Should be bigger that. There will be a major flow of maybe a cup. If it just drips after that there's a clog in the inlet screen, the pipe, the sediment bowl and its screen, or the screen in the tank and it can be some of all of the above. The pipe can have accumulated varnish until it just barely flows.

It can also be coil, condenser, or wiring or gas tank cap, though usually it takes 10 to 15 minutes for the non venting cap to show up. You can check that by loosening the cap when its stopped and quiet. If there's a vacuum, when you loosen the cap, its not venting. Vintage tractor gas caps nearly always contain the vent that's necesary to get fuel out of the tank and a cap from modern vehicles seals tight.

Gerald J.

I had a '55 Chevy that would run like a rabbit, then die just like you turned the key off.  Finally isolated it to the rotor.  Once when it died we removed the distributor cap right away and observed the rotor center contact in a 'down' position, but it was rising back to a normal position.  The rotor was replaced and that took care of the problem.