misfiring

[tomfiii]

Recheck every connection you touched also!

[indian301]

Harry,

I would check the charging system. When the ground wire on my Chief broke it smoked the ceramic resistor on the regulator and would not charge correctly.

Dave

[exeric]

I did have a problem with bad gasoline in my Chief a number of years ago, and the symptoms sound just like your's, Harry. Fresh gas, and purging all the bad gas fixed that problem. I also had similar symptoms with a poor ground wire. You may chase your tail for awhile before you find the true cause.

[pisten-bully]

I’ll apologize in advance for a lengthy post, but I don’t know how to describe this otherwise!

So far this season I’ve ridden my ’46 Chief over 3000 miles without too much fuss. At about 1000 miles I had some running problems so I took a week off and 1) removed and cleaned the carb, set the float again. 2) replaced the battery, 3) replaced the plug wires and plugs, 4) re-set timing, 5) checked the valve lash, 6) installed all new coil, condenser, points, cap and rotor…

So I had 2000+ miles of good riding until Monday, the Chief stopped suddenly at a stop sign and wouldn’t restart. I found the ground wire had broken off at the battery terminal and I was able to do a roadside fix and continue. 30 miles from home main tank ran dry and I switched to reserve. A few miles later the engine misfired once or twice but I kept going. More miles and more misfires…. but between the misfires it ran normally for a few miles each time. Finally I was only getting a quarter mile or so of good running before the misfiring stretches.

So, my first thought was bad gas in the reserve tank? Yesterday I rode the five miles to the gas pumps, it misfired a few times doing that. I filled it up and rode the five miles back home and it misfired several times doing that.

Plugs look good I think:



The cap had some arcing on the front post and a small groove on the rear post, there was brass dust in the distributor body. The rotor was okay and it cleaned up with a few brushes of steel wool.




So I don’t know, it’s supposed to rain today so I won’t be riding but I also don’t trust it right now to get me home!

How long would it take to run through some bad gas?