hchris

Have you taken note of the color of the plug electrodes after a run ? Ideally the electrode and insulated nose should have a brownish tinge if the fuel mixture is set right, a whitish color would indicate that its running too lean and sooty color too rich; either mixture fault will cause misfiring although being too lean will cause a backfire as well. Start by analysing the plugs first before delving into ignition, timing, leaking valves etc. all of which could give you similar symptoms.

Definitely sounds like a bad earth problem, try a temporary earth from starter mount bolts to a good clean part of the chassis frame, use a heavy duty cable such as jumper leads. Despite your previous attempts, go clean up the battery to ground cable again.

Was that with the switch at the on position ? if so then the problem is not with the switch but more likely at the distributor end. Can you turn the switch on, go to the distributor and manually open and close points ? you should get a spark at the points, may be a little hard to see in bright daylight.

Spark lever would normally be set full down (retarded) for starting, particularly important if you are hand cranking to avoid kickback, move up to advance for normal driving; whilst driving you might move (down) towards retard if you were climbing a hill or slowly lugging along in top gear. Throttle lever is moved down to increase revs, you might use this to crack the throttle a little for cold starting and warm up.

Great job with the picture Jack, just to elaborate if I may on the switch labelling, curb - park lights, off -ignition off, day - ignition on (no lights), bright and dim - headlight hi and low beam with ignition on. Moving on to the two items at the top of the instrument panel, the left one is actually the instrument panel light, twist the housing around and you will see the internal globe, or fitting if the globe is missing, the idea is that you can turn the housing through 360 degrees to have full, partial or no instrument lighting. The knob to the right of it is the choke control as already described One other item in your photos is the speedometer trip meter reset knob, immediately under the dash below the speedometer. Cant remember if you push or pull on the control as you turn it, but it should rewind the lower dial to zero much like a modern trip meter reset.

There was no ignition key for this model, the dash mounted switch you see is simply used to make the ignition circuit live when you move to that position, you will note that the other positions are for lighting. The starter button or foot pedal will turn the starter over when depressed, it is live all the time, in other words if you depress it at any time the starter motor will operate - be warned. Therefore moving the dash switch to ignition position is where you want to be, if you want the engine to run after you depress the starter button / pedal, to stop the engine you obviously move the dash switch to off, if you need to use lights then move the switch to the desired position and if the engine is running, it will continue to run - however if you have the lights on with the engine stopped, the ignition is still live, so if you inadvertently engaged the starter in this situation the engine would start. So you may well ask how could you stop the car from being stolen if you don't need a key to start it, if you look at the base of the gear stick in the floor you will notice a lock in the transmission casing; so you should have a key but its not for the ignition, its to lock the transmission in gear when you leave the vehicle, not exactly foolproof but I guess life was simpler back then.

I think the logic runs that if you were in a well lit street you might not notice if you only turned parkers on rather than headlights, by designing the switch this way you cant make that mistake if you only want parkers.

Remove the core plugs and flush the block, if the thermostat(s) don't fix it

Perhaps the only way to rule out the carb is to source another one if possible, another thought, do you happen to be running an electric fuel pump? also what do you know of the history of the existing pump? Now I wonder if the pump is over pressurising the carb float mechanism, these engines should only run on maybe 1.5 - 2.5psi, if you can measure the pump pressure that might be useful.

Try a judicious amount of heat to the base of the tube, maybe a heat gun rather than flame - bit too risky otherwise, and gentle tapping around the base as you pull and wriggle from the top, good luck.

OK don't know how good you are with carbs, but you should know that there are two main fuel flow circuits in these carbs, first the idle circuit (kind of a misnomer because it actually regulates the fuel flow up to about 1500rpm), this is the circuit affected by idle mixture screw adjustment. The second circuit is known as the power enrichment or sometimes titled as the economiser circuit; disregarding the title, it is the circuit that regulates the fuel flow at higher throttle settings, which it seems is where you are having your trouble. Now as I recall, the Carter BB uses a vacuum control to open or close (depending whether you are opening or closing throttle) a step up piston with a very fine tapered rod that moves in or out of a power enrichment jet, to add fuel at higher speeds or reduce fuel as you close throttle, this mechanism is located in the float bowl. If this item is out of kilter you may well be dumping too much fuel in at high speeds, hence the sooty plugs. The power enrichment system gets its vacuum signal from the inlet manifold thru the carb base plate, it is very important that the carb flange gasket is positioned correctly so as the vacuum port is not blocked off, this may also apply to the float bowl gasket, as it may have holes as well to pass the vacuum through the carb castings. Failing all this, probably the only other item I would double check is the float height and needle / seat mechanism, if for whatever reason the fuel bowl level is too high then your mixture will be abnormally rich all through the range. Now one other thing, I recall you mentioned disconnecting the choke, did you actually ensure that the choke flapper valve was in fact fully open, check this before any of the other.

They are just pressed into the block, unfortunately it is almost impossible to remove them without damage; why cant you clean insitu ?

What carb is fitted ?

Have you driven at high speed with the air cleaner removed ? This might tell you if the air cleaner is at fault, and when it bogs down you might also consider pulling over smartly, shutting off the engine and removing a couple of spark plugs; if its running rich they may well be sooted up confirming that there is a mixture problem.

So which bit about loose manifold bolts is way out there ?

Rebuilt engine? Have you checked that the inlet manifold bolts are still tight? Quite possible they have loosened off with expansion and you have a vacuum leak.

Revving the engine in the drive is not the same as driving with the engine under load, so dont think you have eliminated the fuel supply factor. When you are on the road your fuel consumption is much greater than revving in the driveway, additionally there are a number of different fuel flow circuits at play within the carb, so you would be well advised to check the carb out a little further as well as the pump and fuel lines.

Whilst the low compression in 5 is not helping the cause its unlikely to be the main problem here (however the valves are high on the list for compression loss). Given that you have done some ignition work l would be working my way through the fuel system, starting with the carb, pump and lines from the tank. Having said that, if you dont cure the problem via fuel supply you might look a little closer in the ignition system by replacing plugs, wires, rotor, cap etc. After that it could be in the distributor itself with worn drive shaft bushes.

Getting back to the blown fuse / flat battery, I would be looking for a bare wire chafing at the bottom of the steering column. The horn wire and lighting switch power goes through a switch fixed to the bottom of the column, this switch shares a common fuse with lights and horn.

Don't despair you are not alone, the same guys produced the 34 CA/CB Chrysler; guess what different wheels, hubcaps and so on

Can I ask what is wrong with the existing float? being brass and soldered they can be repaired, depending on the problem.

6 of one and half a dozen of the other I guess, if you first remove the head and establish the valves are stuck then you will have to remove the side covers to fix the problem; at this point you are going to have to remove the manifolds anyway. Whereas I am thinking you might be able to lubricate / manipulate a stuck valve via the side cover first without disturbing the head; toss of a coin really.

Just did a quick search for detectors on a popular website and saw half a dozen in the $30 - $40 range which would do the job; doesn't need to be too sophisticated for this task.

Before you do any head pulling, as mentioned before you can access the valves via the side covers, pulling the head will only allow you to see the valves; to release them they need to be accessed via the side covers. So before you go any further can I suggest you get the right front wheel off, remove the inner guard panels (not difficult once you get your head in there) then take off the side covers; now as you spin the engine over you will be able to see if all the valves are opening and closing correctly. Having said that it might be easier to simply remove the inlet / exhaust manifold and get to the side covers that way.

All good and logical suggestions above, our experiences down here are that the straight 8 has marginal cooling at the best of times. Certainly the internal cooling tube that runs along the valve seats is a weak point in the Chrysler engine design, if you don't know the history of the engine this would be high on my priority list, however do the easy things first, rad. flush etc. Having said all that,before I touched anything I would do as Rusty suggests and spend $30 / $40 on a hand held infra red tool to check temps around the engine / rad. and verify that the temp gage agrees with the infra red device. With a bit of dexterity you could probably put the beam on the exhaust valve locations and see if some are hotter than others, usually a good indicator that the previously mentioned cooling tube is shot.