Was driving my 30U today and had a big problem. Car was running fine, but when I pulled away from a stop and accelerated fairly hard to get up to speed, a saw a puff of grey smoke from the back and started immediately losing power when accelerating. It felt like the car was missing fairly badly upon acceleration, but was fine when at idle or off the gas. I'm guessing I may have a valve problem. Plugs and wires are showing power when hooked up to a multi-meter. Any other ideas before I open this thing up to figure out what's wrong? Thanks again for any suggestions.
Check for compression. Remove the plugs and DON'T turn on the ignition. Take out the sparkplugs and spin the engine over with the foot starter switch and either put a compression tester on each sparkplug hole or just your finger. ANY compression will blow your finger off the hole. You can also use a piece of hard rubber over the hole instead of your finger. You can push and hold the rubber harder than your finger to gauge if you have any great compression difference in one cylinder. This sounds ugly but in a more powerful later model car it sounds like you punctured a piston. A stuck valve would not involve oil smoke (I think).
Thanks. I'll do a test on it this weekend and see if I can get to the bottom of it.
Could it be a fairly bad ignition break down. Like as if the engine has a weak spark. I would be checking the spark from the coil. Should throw a spark 1/2 an inch. Are u still running original coil?
I highy doubt you have blown a piston. Not enough combustion pressure and temp. But anything possible.
Ian
Not running the original coil. I'll add all of these suggestions to my list of tests, plus I'll run the tests suggested in the owner's manual. Thanks again.
Well, started out with the owner's manual's suggestions and checked all wires, coil, and ground connections and they seemed ok. Then, took out all plugs, thoroughly cleaned them in gasoline and regapped the plugs. Took it for a test drive around the block after getting to operating temperature. Car ran fine, which is great news. Must have just been the plugs, but it sure let out a big cloud of smoke and ran very rough last weekend, so I thought it was a larger issue. I'll take for it a little longer drive this afternoon to monitor it and make sure nothing else pops up.
Thank you again for all your replies and assitance. It's folks like you that keep us encouraged to keep our 85 year-old cars on the road.
-Chris
When I first got my car I had a lot if problems similar to yours. Each time it was something simple like the plugs, points,carb. adjustment etc
I learned the hard way to look for the simple fixes.
.
These engines are tough old birds.
Glad you got her going!
SteveG