ALPHIE LIVES & BREATHES - after forty-five years (maybe more)!

Clint (previous owner) tells me that he thinks Alphie last ran around 1979 or 80, and I brought him home six years ago…

That’s a long sleep! 

(Apparently I need a computer science degree to get a video embedded in Blogger - go to the More Stuff column on the right for the Alphie Lives! video.  BTW, The whirring sound you hear before I crank Alphie are fans blowing the exhaust out of the garage.)

The video isn’t the FIRST start because, of course, I had some problems. 

1. I burned Pertronix Ignitor when I hooked it up to a 1.4-ohm coil, it requires a 3-ohm coil. More on this below.

2. I had the plug wires in the wrong order – duh! 

3. The timing was WAY off, and I couldn’t get it to idle slow enough to set it.

4. The idle was high because I had the “secondary throttle barrel” (as the service manual calls it) of the carb open, so as soon as the engine hit, it raced.  Fixed that.

5. The timing isn’t as easy as it should be.  Alpiners know there is a timing adjuster thumb screw on the vacuum advance, BUT the distributor has to be turned to a ballpark timing because the screw adjuster can only adjust so much.  Getting the little clamp that holds the distributor to the block is a bit, shall-we-say, fiddly, but I persevered and got it. 

6. BEFORE I tried to fire up Alphie for the first time, I discovered that I had the wrong fittings on the fuel line out of the tanks and into the fuel pump.  Care to guess how I determined they were too small?  I only poured about a quart of gas on the floor. 

I discovered I needed a better engine ground when I burned my hand on the clutch hydraulic line.  Fixed that. 

I also found some oil and exhaust leaks during all this.

I should readjust the valve too.

So, he's not quite ready for the road just yet.

Back to the fried Ignitor: I was pretty sure I had cooked the Ignitor because I had spark, and Alphie was chugging fitfully along with his wrong firing order and WAY too advanced timing, but when I tried to fire him up again, I had no spark.  I spent two days (maybe more) checking everything with the multimeter then double checking, then triple checking but couldn’t find anything wrong.  The coil was obviously not tripping, but I couldn’t figure out why.  I suspected the Ignitor, so I ran the Ignitor unit test on the Pertronix website, but the results were confusing. 

I spent about 2.5 hours on the phone with the Pertronix guys before we got the test done correctly and determined that I had blown the first Ignitor.  (Turned out I had the multimeter leads wrong for the positive ground test.)  

The voltage is supposed to drop from 12-volts (battery voltage) to zero (or at least below 3-volts) when the magnet is turned past the Ignitor unit.  Mine went from 12 to 4-volts, bad Ignitor unit.  The Pertronix tech guys were great, by the way. 

I bought a new Ignitor and 3-ohm Flame Thrower coil and Bob’s your uncle, plenty of spark!

I shot the video AFTER all that!  You can tell that Alphie still needs some fine tuning; he’s kind of chugging a bit during the video.  I can hear an exhaust leak, and I can see some oil drops on the floor, so there’s more work to do before Alphie can leave the garage.

Shiny Knockoff Spinners!

I LOVE 'EM!

The pic at the top of the post shows an old spinner next to the rechromed one so you can see just how much better they are!

A huge shout out to Joe DelVecchio at Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating for re-chroming Alphie’s spinners.  They look AWESOME!

Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating, 23220 Laura Lane, New Caney, TX 77357.  (713) 299-1555 or joe@redspartattic.com