MTFCA Forum

My race car didn't want to run to good today. I guess Ill need to add a heat tube.

Hi John,

Yeah, it can occur given the necessary atmospheric conditions.

There really ARE conditions when the hot air pipe IS necessary. Bill

I kept taking my heat pipe off and then put it back on after my carburetor ices up. Now I just leave it on. It does not detract from the performance that much.

They also keep small birds and bugs out of the carburetor !!

I have a box full of various stoves in various conditions, if you need one John...

Thanks Dave, I may end up taking you up on that. I have one for my 25, I'll see if it will come close to working. Then I'll let you know.

I keep them on both of ours. I've had the carb freeze up on my TT before.......WITH the heat pipe on it. It may rob a bit of HP, but if I'm in a HP mood, I'm not gonna pick the T to drive anyway.

John,
In a previous thread I believe you said you are running a Model A engine in this car.
Did the Model A's have a carb heater similar to the Model T's? I am not particularly familiar
with Model A engines but don't recall seeing one before.
Harry

Model A's had the intake piggybacked & bolted onto the exhaust manifold - it didn't require a separate hot air pipe.

Harry, Thanks for reading my race car project post. My problem is I have made special intake and exhaust manifolds that don't take advantage of the stock set up, that Steve mentioned, so it will need something special. Thanks for the inquiry.

Here's what I ended up installing on my Winfield SRB - wet air up here in the PNW - I believe I should add an adjustable flapper for summer driving !

Well I waited for better conditions and it still didn't run well. It would miss at idle and would detonate under power. I took the temps of the exhaust just after starting and found no 1 cylinder much cooler and when idling, grounding the plug made no difference. I took the plug out , brought it to TDC compression stroke and did a leak down test with air. Air coming out the carburetor. Next pulled the valve cover off and checked to see if the valve was adjusted to tight, nope. So what do you think?

sounds like a piece of crud stuck to intake seat keeping intake valve from seating, or you got a bit of fuel residue glommed on to the intake valve stem and a really close fitting guide. I am not a go-fast guy so am not sure you can accomplish this, but usually a thin oil flooded around the intake, rocker moved over or removed, and several good smacks with a plastic faced hammer or similar, to exercise the valve past it's normal opening, and some sharp snaps shut should do it. Also, I would think the rocker/valve gap would be increased if there was a hang up.

I have had valves hang up similarly when I was running ethanol gasoline. I used to poo-poo those that claimed it caused problems and then one year apparently someone's formula changed and BOY did I have trouble. Glomed up carb, corrosion in carb, sticking valves after a winter rest. Took two days to get that particular car back on the road. All 4 intake valves were so gunked up, they'd stick full open. I had to tap each one closed through the plug hole many many times after flooding with marvel mystery oil (OK, so sue me). The gunk finally desolved enough that the car could be started (stem winder) and in about 5 minutes was running fine.

Scott, thanks for the reply, I have had that happen to cars that had old gas in them. They will start and run ok, but when the engine cools down *&%#$$#$
I'll check into that.

Just zip tie a warm can of beer to the affected area, drive a bit, and solve two problems at the same time....

This is what I found when I took the head off. So guess what is happening on #2 cylinder when #1 is at TDC compression stroke, you guessed it, BDC on Intake stroke. When I did a leak down check with air on #1, the air went through the blown head gasket and out #2 intake valve and out the carburetor. It still narrowed it down to taking off the head. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with carb heat after all. I just thought some of you may find this interesting. Thanks.

Michael, Now that's an Idea!! Thanks

Good of you to post the result...so often posters solve the problem and leave the guessers in limbo...

It appears that the head gasket may have been cracked and it also appears that the compressed air may have assisted in the additional tearing of the gasket. I had one that blew a small section out at the same spot. The gaskets are very narrow at that point and may not have full contact with the block and the head due to warping or debris.

Steve Tomaso's comment about the fact that the Model A did not need a separate hot air pipe sort of prompts me to comment about Model T Ford accessory after-market one-piece combination intake/exhaust manifolds like the ANCO or WILMO combination manifolds:

I realize that the main reason for those combination manifolds "back in the day", was to address the problem of very poor fuel (gasoline) during a period of the Model T "era", however, those combination manifolds are very successful nowadays due to the fact that the large one-piece casting allows enough exhaust heat to radiate into the intake portion of the manifold so as to alleviate the need for the separate hot air pipe. Also, an added benefit is that being such a large one-piece casting, the manifold does not have a tendency to "warp" from heat as does the stock (and separate) exhaust manifold. FWIW,.....harold
P.S. - I recall that Royce Peterson runs an ANCO combination manifold on one of his Model T's and speaks vary favorably in the success of the ANCO combination manifold on his ModelT.

Thanks Guys, I did notice that when I took the (in this case) nuts loose, there was hardly any resistance. I did re-torque the head once but after this I will re-torque it a few more times. It was a new high compression head (5.5) when installed. The gasket wasn't recommended for this. I like the copper gaskets but I am also using the recommended (steel inserted )one this time.
Harold, I have one of the combination manifolds on the 25 RPU. It works well with no problems. Thanks again.