I had the good fortune of running into Tom Thorson of
www.valleymotorsofwinona.com this morning as he stopped at his son's house on the way to pick up a 1940 Ford Pickup. He spent some time with me looking at the distributor, and he found the remains of the rivet that I thought I had drilled out and a washer deep inside. Once he had it all apart and was satisfied it was in good working order, he told me to reassemble it by the time he came through town again with the Ford and he would listen to the engine. I did my best and managed to get it all assembled by the time they arrived back, but needed some guidance on finding #1 on the distributor cap. He actually had me hold my finger over the #1 spark plug hole while he tapped the ignition. It was damn obvious when it blew my thumb off the head. With the distributor back on the engine, he had me run it while he watched with the radiator cap off, revved the engine and listened to it. He reported that I did NOT have a bad rod / rod bearings and that what I described was most likely spark knock. He put the radiator cap back on and told me to let it build some pressure and then turn it off and let it cool for a couple of hours. The good news is that the hose did not collapse and I did not have any white smoke when I started it up again. That would have been a sign of coolant getting into the cylinders. FYI - I bought a new radiator cap since my upper radiator hose collapse.
I schedule a pressure test for next Tuesday where the local auto shop will pressurize my radiator to 10lbs and see if it loses pressure. If it does, it may point to a head gasket leak.
HET Forum Question.
I am hoping my spark knock is due to my timing being too advanced. With my cleaned out / repaired distributor I can now see the timing lines, but I need to verify where the pointer is that they should be set relative to. I think it is the little red triangle you can see in the crankcase opening, but I want to find out for sure before I start turning the distributor.
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