- I bought a non running 1959 Edsel Ranger and on the first day was able to get the car to turn over, but I had to keep it floored otherwise it would die. The next day I tried it again and the carb back fired and caught fire. It was put out and tried again. This happend a total of 8 times. I went to Napa auto parts and bought the carb rebuild kit. I did a partial rebuild (nothing too extensive just enough to keep it from leaking gas all over the engine) and tried it again. Turned the key and it once again caught fire. So I decided to call it a day (the day had hit it's high of 40 degrees that day) and am now driving home. I plan to have the car shipped to where I live but that will take a couple of days so until then I am just trying to figure out why the carb kept catching fire. All help is appreciated thank you.
I've never touched an Edsel but how hard can it be to static time it? It looks like the static timing for the Ranger with the automatic transmission is 6 degrees BTDC.
I don't know if the crank pulley has timing marks or not but even if it doesn't you can put a degree wheel on the pulley. These days there's websites that let you make printable degree wheels.
Just find cylinder #1 TDC on the compression stroke and go back 6 degrees.
Pop off the distributor cap and make sure the rotor is pointing towards the #1 spark plug wire. If it isn't, rearrange the wires on the distributor cap, in their firing order, so that the rotor is pointing to the #1 spark plug wire.
Also try to spin the rotor to make sure it doesn't move to see if the drive gear on the distributor might be worn down.
Put the distributor cap back on.
Then pull out the number 1 spark plug and reattach it to its spark plug wire and Ground the spark plug's threads on a good engine ground.
Slightly turn the distributor base in the direction that the distributor turns (to close the points). Then slowly move it against the direction of spin until the points open and the spark plug fires. Tighten down the distributor.
You can do this with a test light on the ground wire at the ignition coil too if you want to do it without pulling the #1 spark plug. As you spin the distributor you'll lose the Ground on the ignition coil when the points open and the ignition coil/spark plug fires.
Well lots of reasons can do that. If it keeps backfiring, it could even be bad valves in the engine which then send flames back up into the carburetor and start a fire. But it could be also ignition failure. The carburetor itself failing. Just realize something that old. A lot of stuff can be worn out. And a carbureted that old a lot of times. You can't fix it with kit. You just have to buy another carburetor
Thanks!
This is kind of a part 2 to a previous post. (link: https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/59-edsel-wont-start/#post-250084)
Once I got it here, I replaced the battery and cleaned the spark plugs, made sure I had spark, put gas in it and tried once again to get it running. The starter cranks endlessly and constantly sounds like it is a dying battery. I know that the timing is messed up, but the only time I was able to get it to run I couldn't adjust the timing and the car died. When I did get it running it sounded like the timing is off. It also doesn't idle I have to keep it floored or it dies. After that I tried and tried for about 3hrs trying to get it to turn over but it just wouldn't. Any advice would help. Thank you!
(topics merged)
thank you I will definitely try that.