Is this stupid or what?

Well, I have always heard a slight rattle coming from the front of the engine. My first thought was that the water pump was going bad, but since I had replaced it during the rebuild I doubted it. After listening to it some more over the next few months (and the pump not failing), I decided it must be a bearing in the generator. Once again, I decided to wait until it got so bad I couldn't stand it. Never got any worse, so I just lived with it. Five years later I've finally found the source...

It was a screw bouncing around inside the left headlight.

(Apparantly, some previous owner broke off the screw on the headlight, so he just wrapped the wire around the stub...and left the spare part inside.)

Argh.
DaveG.

I started laughing when I figured it out... and I felt stupid (hence the title of this thread).

DaveG

One plug wire came off distributor and every third or fourth try, a spark would arc from the cap to the wire and the piston would fire.

For a while it sounded like a hit-n-miss Ford.

When I was younger I got a little upset at a neighbor. I took out my anger by removing his hubcap, rmember the nice tight fiting ones on the Ford Truck steel wheels, I put a little bit a few stones in the metal hub cap and put it back on the truck.

The noise drove him nuts for a few days.

I don't think he ever knew it was me. I thought I was pretty sharp back then for thinking that one up on my own.

-Sal