CO-OP E3 Running Poorly (still)

birdydog14

New User
OK, so. Swing and a miss and possible a new direction. I went out and was going to open up the distributor and in the process realized that the bolt in the bracket that holds the distributor had come out. I thought for sure I was on to something (picture below). Went to town for a bolt and put it back in, but as I was putting on, realized that the distributor would still be in the same relation to the rotor, so doubted it. It did fire right up though and seem to be working. It definitely works better cold or with a fresh battery. I started down the road and it runs decent, then starts to miss again. As the tractor warms up, it definitely gets worse. I am beginning to think it may be a fuel problem. While it is sitting at moderate idle, I can definitely see the governor calling for the carb as the engine misses and begins to slow down. The governor seems to call for the gas fine. As it calls for the gas, it just does not seem to pick up. It also doesnt seem like it is flooding. it just seems like the fuel flow stops and the cylinders quit firing suddenly and the engine coasts down. It seems that as the engine warms up, the fuel does not flow. I'm still struggling. So as I am sitting here typing this, I'm wondering about the valves...right? Help me out here, but proper seating of the valves is what creates the suction for the fuel to flow...right? And the fact that it seems like it rotates freely after it starts to die might also point me there? Am I on the right path and if so, is there a cheap fix here? SeaFoam or other solvent to get the valves to seat better? Also, could it be air leaking around the manifold after the carb?
 

The missing bolt on your distributor bracket allowed your distributor to "walk around". Did you "reset" your distributor to where it should be for top running performance. One more thing............The gap range on your points is .018 to .022. I would be changing the points set and condensor too. It may need a rotor, cap and wires change too. Don't worry about your valves.

I would look for a "mechanical good neighbor" to assist you.

Phil Heisey
215-256-8651
 
Thanks Phil. I was going through my old documentation and found some materials you sent me. Thanks for the direction. I may be able to get out there today and maybe get some more video that may help. Then I will give you a call. I bought a tune-up kit but didn't install it after I found the missing bolt. I "think" the plug wires are fairly new but not 100% positive. For some reason, one of the keys to me seems to be that it runs "decent (not great)" when it first starts up, then gets to "un-runable" when it warms up.
 
"It seems that as the engine warms up, the fuel does not flow."


Does this thing have an inline filter on it? It sounds like it's vapor locking.
 
My 2 cents worth. I about wore out the screws on my E3 carb trying to find the same thing several years ago, miss, no power sometimes die and hard to restart, seemed to help to run with choke part of the way on when it would act up. It finally quit completely one day, NO SPARK, was near a junk yard and had pliers only for tools, I pulled a condenser out of a ford car distributor, hooked wire to dist. lead of coil and used a piece of fence wire to ground condenser body, fired right up and got me home. Condenser in tune up kit was evidently intermittently open, not shorted, and had maybe 20 hours on it from new.
 
So on Sunday night, I headed up with the boy. On Saturday, we dumped in a bunch of SeaFoam. It had a very difficult time starting, and died, and my boy recorded it on video. You can eventually see me pull away with a disk and then it dies. We disconnect the disk and I start driving it back home. It is about a mile drive and there was a stop halfway home to wash it. It was still running a bit rough but I will admit that by the time I got home, it seemed like it was running better. I just put it back in the shed and did not pull anything so I'm not sure what to think. THe link to the video is below. Thanks.
Untitled URL Link
 

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