Seven cylinders on an FE

[JimNolan]

Guys,
   For the last several weeks I've noticed my car stubbling a little on acceleration and seemingly winding out in gears a little early. I automatically deduced that the distributor ( which I recurved and installed a Pertronix unit in )  was not holding the timing where it should be. I decided to order another stock distributor and this time I'd leave the old style points in it. So, I went to ebay, found one to rebuild and put a bid on it. ( Now all this time the engine started well and didn't run all that bad.)
   I took it out this evening to go get a hamburger and had it going up a little hill at slow speed in 4th gear. It missed a little before it picked up enough speed for the miss to go away. Once it picked up speed it was smooth again.  I got home opened the hood and found a sparkplug wire dangling over the side of the exhaust manifold. I put the spark plug wire back on, took it for a drive and had a whole new car with no hesitation and plenty of power again. The top of each gear seemed unending. Now that's bad when you don't know you're car is running on 7 cylinders.
   In the early 70's I had a garage in Greenfield, In where I rebuilt cylinder heads for NAPA and overhauled engines and did tune-ups for people. This one guy brought his car in for a tune-up and after I was through I took it out for a test drive. It started OK, ran good, no misses, it was smooth but I remember thinking this big LTD was a dog as far as power goes. The guy comes to pick up his car, pays the bill and drives off. He comes back in about 30 minutes complaining he has'nt got the power it did before he brought it in. I opened the hood and I had all four spark plug wires on the right bank drapped across the air cleaner. I'd forgotten to put the spark plug wires back on that bank of cylinders. FE's forever. Jim

[shopratwoody]

 

[Bubba]

That's Funny!
Running on 4!!!!
BuBBa

[JimNolan]

Bubba,
   Try it sometime just for sh_ _ _ and giggles. It'll really surprise you. It would be interesting to know which motors out there could lose a bank of cylinders and still run smoothly. If I hadn't been lugging my engine in 4th gear yesterday I would still be running that FE on 7 cylinders. Torque.
   At the factory where I worked every now and then something would happen to the plants air compressor and this portable air compressor company would bring out a big air compressor on wheels for us to use until the one we had got fixed. Once they brought out this big FE Ford engine with one bank of cylinders that ran the engine and one bank of cylinders used as a compressor. It worked great. Jim

[Zapato]

my dad used to tell a story about a painter that had a compressor just as Jim describes except it was with a ford flathead 8, would think that a guy would do it by picking the right firing order to keep it all from shaking to death.

Zap-

[deereford]

Hi all, Just as a little history, conversion heads to make air compressors from automotive engines have bee n around since the late 1920's at least. The most common is the Smith head for the Model A which ran on two and pumped on two. I have a Smith Chrysler that runs on three and pumps on three. Other setups I have seen include the flathead 8, 351, FE, & 460. They all run very smooth. I'm sure there are others out there that I haven't seen So much for todays history lesson. Brad.

[JimNolan]

Thanks Brad, that was enlightning. Jim
     

[Hoosier Hurricane]

kWhen I was in high school, I had a classmate who knew absolutely nothing about cars except how to start and drive them.  He had an older chevy 6, and one night we switched the coil wire with one of the plug wires in the distributor cap.  He drove it about 3 miles to his home, on 1 cylinder!   John

[JimNolan]

John,
    You win. Just kidding, that is amazing. Jim