Vapor lock and clothes pins

[Buick35]

Do wooden clothes pins help with vapor lock or is that a wives tale? Thanks.

[alsancle]

I'm going with wives tale.

 

Keeping the fuel line away from the exhaust and and an electric pump when necessary will definitely help.

[Bhigdog]

That belongs with the magic engine pills to stop oil burning, the  pills that turn water into gasoline, the electric hat that "cures" baldness,  the fat melting pills, the magic de-wrinkling cream that will melt the years away and the male supplements that will make you so much more the MAN and make your wife swoon with desire............Bob

[DFeeney]

I will buy the Electric hat if anyone has a extra.

[Buick35]

18 minutes ago, DFeeney said:

I will buy the Electric hat if anyone has a extra.

Me too.

[Jim Bollman]

Crosley Xervac

[Ozstatman]

At least a couple of guys believed the OWT.

[Jubilee]

Worked on the farm on those 100+ degree days.

Wrap fuel line in burlap and fasten with clothes pins.

No zip ties then.

City folks didn’t realize the clothes pins were just a fastener.

 

[Bloo]

Well...

 

This is not the way. I don't believe it. I have even seen the clothespins work, repeatedly, on 2 different cars and I *still* don't believe it. There is no possible way those could help, and it has been discussed and gone over ad nauseam in other threads. There has to be another reason. Correlation is not causation.

 

To fix tough cars you absolutely have to stick to the laws of nature. You can't fool mother nature. She can fool you though if you let up your guard and ignore her rules. Intermittent things like vapor lock can drive you crazy if you allow it. You'll think you fixed it and then a week or a month later it's right back at the worst possible moment. A better way is to make the whole fuel system good. Test things, fix the ones that are obviously bad, and see if you still have a problem.

 

A few hints:

 

Most intermittent problems are not truly intermittent. Most are broken all of the time, and just cause problems that can be noticed part of the time. Once you know that, it's easier. Don't try things at random. Test parts of the system and prove whether they are bad or not. It would be a waste to spend a bunch of time troubleshooting and still not know anything. If you know one or two or three things the problem isn't, you are well on your way to knowing what the problem is. You haven't wasted your time. I see people throwing darts (or parts or clothespins) at a problem randomly and I want to bang my head on the table. There was a time, long ago, when I fell into traps like that fairly regularly. It's painful to watch.

 

Even discussing vapor lock is tough because a whole bunch of different thermal problems get lumped in together. The causes and solutions are different, and you might have more than one. Some examples are 1) Fuel boiling in the supply line under the car due to radiant heat from the pavement, supplying vapor faster than the fuel pump can pump. This is "true" vapor lock... I think. 2) Fuel boiling in the fuel pump preventing it from pumping. 3) Fuel boiling in the fuel pump forcing liquid fuel in the fuel line to the carb past the carb's float valve, running the float bowl over and flooding the engine, at the same time there is no more fuel available right away should the engine clear itself and try to start. The lines are empty. 4) Fuel boiling in the fuel pump, leaking backward through a marginal check valve and blowing the fuel line empty clear to the tank. The pump that allowed this to happen won't have an easy time picking the fuel back up. 5) Fuel boiling in the carburetor when the engine is shut off hot, escaping through the bowl vent, leaving the fuel bowl and the accelerator pump empty. This should start, just not easily and quickly since the fuel bowl needs to refill. 6) Fuel boiling in the carburetor and "percolating" when shut off, emptying the bowl into the intake manifold, leaving the engine flooded and the carb bowl empty at the same time. I've probably missed a few other possibilities.

 

Don't fall into the trap of blaming the fuel right away because troubleshooting "vapor lock" is hard. The fuel could be absolute crap, and today it probably is crap, but that changes nothing. The odds are against it being the root of the problem.

 

The most reliable fuel delivery system by far for a carburetor is a fuel tank with a sock in it, a mechanical fuel pump, and a filter of some sort near or in the carb's fuel inlet. There are good reasons this system and variations of it were used for decades. Use a sock filter in the fuel tank if it is at all practical to do so. Water will collect in balls and bounce off of it. Water is less of an issue these days with ethanol in the fuel, but it can't hurt. Debris also falls off of a sock rather than getting pumped, especially heavy debris like rust. Some gets stuck in the sock but not much. Most falls off into the bottom of the tank. The fuel line to the front of the car absolutely must NOT leak. Avoid adding more hoses to the system and fix or replace any that do belong. So many cars have a rotten hose back at the fuel sender that has not been looked at in 50 years or more. Small leaks despite what you might think will not usually show wet, but will prevent the fuel pump from recovering quickly from a "true" vapor lock. The check valves in the fuel pump must seal. They must hold vacuum, just like the fuel line must hold vacuum. If the check valves leak, if the fuel pump needs to be "wet" to prime, you can be sure when it is full of vapor it won't do anything except sit there like a stupid stone. On the other hand if the fuel pump can pull vacuum without any fuel in it, it might recover from a vapor lock before the carburetor even gets empty. You might not ever know it happened.

 

Keep fuel lines away from radiant heat as much as possible. Usually the factory got this as right as it can be, but maybe the last guy who replaced the lines didn't. Once in a while you may have to change the routing.

 

Adding an electric push pump to prime things is not something I normally default to. I'd rather not because it adds extra stuff to the critical fuel line from the back to the front of the car. If you do, follow the advice of many on this forum and put the electric pump at the back of the car, and on a switch. It's the best way. Make sure any fuel lines you add cannot possibly leak air.

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Bloo (see edit history)

[Stude Light]

Maybe adding enough clothes pins on that Olds Rocket above, you can create a wooden insulating barrier around the fuel line 😀.

[Rusty_OToole]

Maybe if they were metal they would act as cooling fins and draw away heat. I don't see wooden ones doing much. I like the idea of wrapping with some kind of insulation, then you can soak it in water if necessary.

[carbking]

In a different lifetime, before I started The Carburetor Shop, the 16 year old son of my boss found an MG Midget with a blown engine that he bought. I had a wrecked A.H. Sprite with a good engine, and a friend and I installed the engine in his Midget one Saturday morning.

 

He LOVED the car! BUT he found a new "noise" every 3rd or 4th day, which he would call about. This was in December, and for a Christmas present, I presented him with a pair of ear muffs. He thought about it, laughed, and drove that Midget pretty much trouble-free through high school AND college.

 

If the clothes pins "work" in the mind of the car owner, then they work. As far as physically working, wood is a good insulator. Possibly if the entire fuel line was enclosed in clothes pins the temperature of the fuel would be reduced?

 

But to cite a quotation supposedly by P.T. Barnum found on another forum "its a moral sin to allow a sucker to keep any money in his pocket"

 

Jon

[60FlatTop]

I am looking at the five McGraw-Hill mechanic textbooks my Mom helped me buy in 1959. In the living room on the book shelf next to my chair are four editions of Computerized Engine Control I have bought and been reading for a while now.

 

The more I study the more of this kind of stuff vaporizes.

 

I have learned enough to make a pretty convincing line of BS. Sometimes my wife and I will walk away from a conversation with another person and she will say "You know they believed you!"

 

 

 

 

[oldcarfudd]

6 minutes ago, 60FlatTop said:

I have learned enough to make a pretty convincing line of BS. Sometimes my wife and I will walk away from a conversation with another person and she will say "You know they believed you!"

 

Have you thought of running for office?

[Century Eight]

Bloo.   Best explanation I’ve ever seen

[60FlatTop]

4 minutes ago, oldcarfudd said:

Have you thought of running for office?

Held one for two years and found I was not of their ilk.

[plymouthcranbrook]

18 hours ago, DFeeney said:

I will buy the Electric hat if anyone has a extra.

Too late for me.

[Terry Bond]

17 hours ago, Ozstatman said:

At least a couple of guys believed the OWT.

They are in the wrong place. They need to be put them on the nose so the smell of all the bs is less noticeable. 

[joe_padavano]

Physics is your friend. Keeping the fuel line cool requires a radiator. The desired properties of a radiator are conductivity and high emissivity (the ability to radiate heat). Wooden clothespins have neither. But hey, people don't believe science anymore... 🙄

[CarlLaFong]

Be careful that you don't use too many pins as there will not be enough room for the magnets to align the molecules in the gas.

[rocketraider]

I've seen people use wooden clothespins and claim it helped. I can't speak to it.

 

Also known people to wrap the metal fuel line with tinfoil and then "flag" the foil. This to me makes more sense as the foil "flags" act as a heat sink of sorts.

[joe_padavano]

6 minutes ago, rocketraider said:

I've seen people use wooden clothespins and claim it helped. I can't speak to it.

People also claim that the earth is flat.

[rocketraider]

 

[Bill Boudway]

Many moons ago, I learned that a guy could urinate on the fuel pump to cool the fuel.

Any one have luck with this?

[carbking]

1 hour ago, Bill Boudway said:

Many moons ago, I learned that a guy could urinate on the fuel pump to cool the fuel.

Any one have luck with this?

Don't try it on an EV!

 

Jon

[carbking]

4 hours ago, joe_padavano said:

People also claim that the earth is flat.

Definately not flat, but hilly, here in the Ozarks!

[Pfeil]

2 hours ago, Bill Boudway said:

Many moons ago, I learned that a guy could urinate on the fuel pump to cool the fuel.

Any one have luck with this?

I once saw a guy at a gas station fill his tank and try a restart. Naturally the car was in full hot soak time. I went into the mini market and got a 16Oz cup and filled it with water, came out and asked the guy to raise the hood, I then poured the water on his fuel pump. The car started no problem after a few seconds.

 

Another way to prevent all of this is to install a fuel filter for a car with A/C and run a fuel line back to the tank to keep

cool fuel from the tank recirculating all the time. 

 

 >inlet               >outlet top to carb. small bottom one return line.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Pfeil (see edit history)

[joe_padavano]

13 minutes ago, Pfeil said:

Another way to prevent all of this is to install a fuel filter for a car with A/C and run a fuel line back to the tank to keep

cool fuel from the tank recirculating all the time.

 

Yes, fuel return was a staple on GM cars that were expected to experience high underhood temperatures - mainly A/C and high performance cars.

[MGRAB]

2 hours ago, Bill Boudway said:

Many moons ago, I learned that a guy could urinate on the fuel pump to cool the fuel.

Any one have luck with this?

I never saw that however, back in HS I had a summer job working at a local marina as a dockhand.  Most of the time my responsibility was taking care of the rental boat fleet and assisting people who rented from us.  One day we rented a boat to a couple of guys a little older than me.  Near the end of the day, I get a distress call from them on the radio that they ran out of fuel.  I hop in the tow boat and head out to their location.  I find them and I see one of them has a bit of a distressed look and the other guy immediately says: "We did all we could."  I enquired what he meant by that as they were out of fuel and not much could be done.  "Well, we tried urinating in the gas tank."  My head dropped and shook in disbelief.  "But we saw them do it, in the movie Red Dawn!"  I then informed them that they needed to go back and watch the movie again as in the movie they had urinated in the radiator. 

 

I also worked on the side with the mechanics there after hours.  It was so hard not to laugh when I told them what had happened and why the boat was back in the shop.  Had I laughed I may have ended up tearing it down at night.  I never heard how bad it was, but it was in the shop for a week and those guys had a full cooler with them that day on the boat.

[gossp]

I believe that having the hood up long enough to place or adjust twenty or so clothes pins may be sufficient to temporarily fix the issue. 

[rocketraider]

1 hour ago, carbking said:

Don't try it on an EV!

 

Jon

 

 

[Pfeil]

10 hours ago, joe_padavano said:

Physics is your friend. Keeping the fuel line cool requires a radiator. The desired properties of a radiator are conductivity and high emissivity (the ability to radiate heat). Wooden clothespins have neither. But hey, people don't believe science anymore... 🙄

It's not that they don't believe in science. These days they are too busy teaching other things that matter more than science.😟

Edited April 5, 2023 by Pfeil (see edit history)

[46 woodie]

You really can't ask a question such as this and expect to get a definitive and scientific answer. Everyone that has clothespins on their fuel lines will say that they work great. "With the clothespins on my fuel line, I can drive in Death Valley at 125 degrees with no vapor lock", no one like's to think they are wrong. Come on guy's, these old cars had vapor lock when they were new. Insulated fuel lines and an electric fuel pump and most of the problem is solved. Flathead Ford's are notorious for vapor lock, so the V-8 Club allows electric fuel pumps in your fuel system with zero point deduction. One thing I notice in the picture of the Old's engine with clothespins on the fuel line is that there is no radiator shroud. The second picture has the fuel line directly over the exhaust manifold. Why fix the problems correctly when we can get away with clothespins!

[Pfeil]

You really can't ask a question such as this and expect to get a definitive and scientific answer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't know that! 

 

[RansomEli]

I used to own a '56 Olds and had vapor lock problems. Wrapped the fuel line with aluminum foil and then held it in place with wooden clothes pins. 

 

It worked for me. What can I say?

 

 

[mark graber]

This reminds me of the farmer who put up a two foot high fence all around his field.  A passerby stopped one day and asked the farmer what the fence was for.  The farmer replied that the fence kept the wolverines out of the field.  The passerby told the farmer that wolverines had not been sighted in the area for over fifty years.   To wit the farmer replied, "See, it works!"

[Buick35]

I know,off the topic but a true story.About thirty some years ago a family in town wore aluminum foil pyramid shaped hats to ward off evil and bring good luck( I guess).Anyway the dad was run over by my bosses pickup truck.I don't think the pyramid hat helped or maybe it did .I don't know if he survived or not.

[60FlatTop]

On 4/4/2023 at 2:09 PM, joe_padavano said:

People also claim that the earth is flat.

They haven't declassified the report on Columbus' fourth ship, the Isabella.

[joe_padavano]

2 hours ago, 60FlatTop said:

They haven't declassified the report on Columbus' fourth ship, the Isabella.

[Brass is Best]

It works. Not sure of the science nor do I care. But it works.