Ever since I acquired my 1964 356C I was having a problem that had the
symptoms of fuel starvation. With my trusty private mechanic Gordy
Smith and counsel from Tom Funk we tried everything. The issue was
that when the engine was just started it would run great but after warming
up it just did not have any power under acceleration. After sitting
cooling down for half an hour or so it started and ran just fine until it
warmed up again.
So Tom adjusted the carburetors (when it was cold) and we tore around the
neighborhood by his shop and it ran perfectly. But on the toll road
driving home it warmed up and exhibited the same problem. So over a
period of a year we did the following:
Now I hate to admit that my undergraduate degree is in electrical
engineering from one of the big universities. You will soon see why.
Driving home from one of our club events in Wisconsin I was just limping
along the toll road, frustrated with the poor performance of my C coupe.
It was running around 3,000 RPM when it was time to turn on the headlights
due to the setting sun. As I pulled out the light switch the engine
coughed and again exhibited the "fuel starvation" symptom. A few more
ons and offs with the lights told me that this was an electrical issue, not
fuel starvation.
As we were driving home I pondered my basic transformer theory from my
freshman year and thought: Isn't the ignition coil a transformer and
maybe the spark plugs are not getting enough high voltage when the engine
heats up? So the next day I removed the ignition coil (newer looking
Bosch Blue coil) and measured the primary and secondary resistance with my
ohmmeter. Everything was within specification. But the physical
location of the coil on the fan housing gets fairly warm after driving a
while so I tested the primary while heating up the coil on the bench--still
within spec. Then I let it cool down and repeated the secondary
resistance with the heat gun on the coil. As the coil heated up the
secondary resistance eventually dropped in half telling me the secondary was
shorting out when in a hot engine compartment.
Sure enough when I let the coil cool, the secondary resistance went back up
to normal. Obviously the coil was working fine when cold but shorted
across the windings when under normal heat in the engine compartment,
lowering the voltage to the spark plugs. A new coil was installed in
five minutes and now it runs like a C engine should both cold and hot.
So to all of you taxpayers who helped me through college under the GI
Bill--thank you. I may be a little slow, but I did eventually figure
out this challenging and very basic technical issue.