peeot,

At this point maybe it is time for a reboot. By that I mean can you please JUST DESCRIBE EXACTLY what happens to your Ford after you start it up. Please do not try to analyse the problem JUST DESCRIBE THE SYMPTOMS. It could be so many various things happening or not happening that you have to remember we can not experience what is going on and we need you to describe it. I don`t even know what color your car is so when you say the car just dies. Is that like it is running then it is off, like I turn off the key? Or does that mean the car just dies, like it ran out of gas? In both cases the car just dies but the meaning is not the same.

The better description that you can provide the better and more accurate the advice you will receive. Pete

Guys, let me just take a second to thank you again for your thoughtful consideration and willingness to help with this problem. I know I write long posts; my aim is to catalogue the issue as clearly as possible so as to be helpful if anyone else gets stuck in the same rut. So many problem threads on the web wind up unfinished with no solution posted--I hope not to contribute to that trend.

Aussiebill, you make a good point. The battery should be able to run the car for longer than a minute with the lights on even if the gen isn't working.

pegleg, I am using an aftermarket choke stove strapped to the exhaust manifold because the original heat passage was rusted out like you describe.

Pete, I kept things as simple as possible this time. From cold start, let engine run at fast idle until hot air was coming through the radiator, right about 10 minutes. Everything was fine except for the very occasional single miss. Once warm, I took the engine down to hot idle in neutral, around 750-800 rpm. Engine idled this way for 15 minutes with no trouble except a rare single miss. I turned on the headlights and it continued to idle no trouble for about 5 minutes. I turned the lights back off and let it continue to run. 5 minutes later, now 40 minutes since cold startup, the engine started to miss irregularly. Sometimes maybe 10 or 15 seconds would pass without a miss at all; then, misses would occur anywhere from once per second to 5 times per second for a period of maybe 10-15 seconds. Then, it would not miss again for another 5-15 seconds. Each time it would have a "missing fit" I thought it would stall, but after another 10 minutes of observation, it didn't. The missing continued in irregular "fits" followed by brief periods of smoothness throughout the 10 minutes. Then, I turned the headlights on and there was an immediate cluster of misses, slowing the engine to a stall. At the 40 minute mark, when the missing pattern started, I watched the spark with the timing light and it blinked out consistent with every miss. I also watched it when I turned the lights on the last time and saw the spark miss and slow with the engine speed until stopped (which took maybe 3 seconds after I turned the lights on).

And the car is black with a grey interior

1954 Crestline Victoria 312 4-bbl, 3-speed overdrive

peeeot,

Now that I know your car is black with a gray interior here are some ideas. Try to think "outside the box" on this.

From your VERY COMPLETE description it seems the problem is heat related. Temp increases and the problem occures.

Blocked exhaust? Electrical resistance increases as temp increases. Check your connections and grounds. Failing battery. Do a hot load test. Bad generator when hot. Why else would turning on headlites kill the ignition? The voltage to the coil is falling below the minimum required to keep the car running. Find out why. The fact that 4 sparkplugs are dead white and 4 are carboned up could be a clue. Water in those 4 white sparkplug cylinders as the motor heats up? Try not to make the problem fit what you think it is. Pete

Pete,

It is hard not to make the problem fit what I think it is, haha. It makes sense that when a thorough exploration fails to expose a problem that the exploration is in the wrong area.

The battery is new; still, running with a charger connected should test the charging system theory. Personally I think that the reason why turning on the headlights kills the engine is that once the misfire pattern has begun, the added load of the generator due to the higher electrical demand tends to slow the engine moreso than without that load so whenever a miss occurs the engine speed decreases that much more and pushes it "over the edge" to a stall. It was on the edge of stalling during most of the missing fits. Before the missing began it handled running with the lights on just fine.

After I posted that last one I went back out and triple-checked connections at battery, grounds, and in ignition wiring and found no problems. To confirm the results of last time, I tried a different coil again and again it made no difference. Voltage to the coil is not dropping below 10 volts even with the lights on.

Your suggestion of water in the back 4 is one I have not been willing to consider but it's time I did a compression test, maybe one before the missing shows up and one after. I have not mentioned that there is almost always some amount of visible emissions from the pipes. During yesterday's running it would come and go, disappearing completely sometimes and then reappearing moderately or weakly. It looks just like the normal vapor you see as the hot exhaust clears out condensation in the pipes. Perhaps it's small amounts of antifreeze bleeding in.

The exhaust isn't blocked, but I know the mufflers were installed backward! Silly previous owners.

1954 Crestline Victoria 312 4-bbl, 3-speed overdrive

Peeoot, any thoughts on vacuum leak? i would be curious what a vacuum guage showed, cold and when hot miss starts, at least its another way of narrowing things down. keep up the search.

I just added this after above reply, what year fairlane is it, some early ignition systems had black thick resistor wire from ign switch to coil and would go undetected when problem shooting, also how about changing volt regulator to rule it out? I know i,m throwing more logs on the fire but just my thoughts.

  AussieBill            YYYY    Forever Y Block     YYYY

 Down Under, Australia

If it was antifreeze you would notice the rad level dropping when it cools off.You have driven it enough that you would notice by now the coolant level dropping.

  

The compression numbers are in, from 1-8: 167,161,161,156,158,160,160,155. All 8 cylinders got very close to their final number after 3 compression strokes. I was not at all expecting them to be that good or consistent as this was a quick clean-and-rering job. #8 was rusted stuck when I purchased the car and there were pits in the cylinder wall from the rust when I put it together. The piston is a used standard piece. Those numbers were taken after driving the car around until I started having idle problems. Factory spec is 160 psi.

oldcarmark, I have actually been monitoring the coolant level as it dropped at one point, but there have been a couple minor hose leaks which were the likely culprits. Hard to say whether the level has changed since, so it can't have changed by much.

aussiebill, my car is a '57 and there is not a resistor wire. I had a new regulator installed when these problems cropped up; I have since switched back to the old one!!

When I left the car it was behaving exactly as it would if the resistor had shorted open. But I know that that isn't happening.

1954 Crestline Victoria 312 4-bbl, 3-speed overdrive

Is your coil wired backwards?

I chased a similiar sounding problem for about a year and by accident found that the ground wire from the Dist. housing to the breaker plate was broken inside the insulation. Installed a new ground wire and I have not had a problem since. Worth a look see.

312T85Bird

What?

Peeeot,

All your testing seems to come back normal. What did you do to fix the coil from overheating? Have you put a vacuum gauge on the engine and monitor the readings when this starts carring on?

JJ