Leans out and dies after awhile

SYMPTOMS: After running all day (just lifting posts, not pulling anything hard), but just when you need her to hang in there, she'll start sputtering and die at any throttle setting. If you pull on the choke, she'll hang on 15-30 seconds more. (Sounds like a movie with an old bi-plane that's about to crash...)

Let her sit for about 30 seconds to a minute, and she starts right back up, no problemo. Runs for another 5-15 minutes.

The fuel line feels cool all over, so I don't think it's vapor locking. Opening the bowl stopcock lets fuel run out.

And it still does it with the gas cap cracked, so I don't think it's the vent. Tapping on the carb and cussing doesn't seem to do anything but scare the mouse in my toolbox.

I did open the mixture knob one more turn and that seems to prolong the periods between sputtering.

I saw lotsa posts in the archives about electrical probs, but I feel like I want it to be a fuel problem! It is an early 8N with front-mount disti, tho.

Anyone want to give me an order-of-operations for debug?

Screens first? Coil next? Or rebuild carb next? Or?

MO

BUT lets make sure you haven't overlooked a bad ignition switch. Next time it conks out on you, quick, jumper wire with alligator clippies, your ignition switch. If it starts right up, you know the drill.

Many years ago, I got my fuel valve and carb elbow filter from local NAPA store. Local Ford dealer was 120 miles up the road.

One of the founding N-Board contributors used to claim that 80% of all carb problems were found and solved in the ignition system, something to think about..... ...Dell

Why she can't die under a tree where it's nice to work, I'll never know.

Short story: blew out the screen in the elbow and voila!

As for the coil, I'm heeding the warnings ahead of time. Question on that, though. I've seen so many folks on here have coils crap out, I wonder if the capacitive discharge/electronic ignition amplifiers would help prolong their life, since they never put DC on the coil if the points happen to be closed?? Or is it mostly engine heat that kills them??? If so I'm going to look at moving it away from where Henry put it.

And NO, there is NO commercially available electronics ignition module available for frontmount distributor, sorry.

Frontmount ignition coil is killed by heat. Mostly internally generated by too much AMPS. but heat transfer from radiator is contributory too.

Biggest source of excess AMPS is a "missing" or by-passed ballast resistor on the backside of the dashpanel.

There are some miss-guided shadetree mechanics, that by-pass the infamous ballast resistor in the miss-taken idea that the reason the tractor won't start, is the sparkies are not hot enuff.....

well yes, if you increase the amps, the sparkies will be hotter until the internal insulative tar melts from the increased amps and shorts out the coil windings. All-in-all, not a longterm viable idea..... ..... Dell