Carbon Tracking

I got my 26 DB back after the rebuild. He wasn't done but at ,$4200 I decided to pull the plug. He said the vacuum tank was not working right and it was only hitting on one cylinder. I bought an electric fuel pump. I also took the carb and vac tanks apart and cleaned then. I installed the fuel pump and put in new plugs. Still only hitting on one cylinder. I called the mechanic. He said I might need to adjust the valves. I tried but wasn't sure of what I was doing so took it back to the mechanic. He looked at the dist cap and found a black crack. He said the valves are fine, this is your problem. He said the crack goes to cylinder #2...the only one that was firing. He said it's called carbon tracking. I had never heard of that and was skeptical. He said carbon gets in the crack and the current goes from the center point of distrib and takes the shortest path to ground....which is thru the crack to #2 to gnd....bypassing the rotor.

I was skeptical. So he took #2 wire off and started it up and the other 3 started firiring! I was amazed!

I learned a lot today!

Trying to to find a new dist cap locally.....if not, will order one from Meyers.

If he " rebuilt" this engine he would have had to adjust the valves. So why did he tell you to do it? If he rebuilt it he would have had it running to check hiw work. Why would he not have already told you the cap was bad? You better find another mechanic.

We didn't see the crack until we were getting ready to recheck the valves. I pulled the plug on him before he was done....thinking I could finish up after he'd done the main rebuild. The car ran great after the rebuild but got progressively worse.....presumably as the crack got worse.