Hard to start when cold

[dltalfa]

OK,...here's an update. I have checked most everything on the car, so today I decided to pull the top off the float resevior prior to starting. The float bowl was dry as a bone!!!

I placed the open fuel line inside a cola bottle and turn the ignition over. It took almost 20 seconds of turning before I had fuel squirting into the bottle.

Where did the gas in the bowls go?

There are no signs of leakage under the car.

[olzed]

How long was the car sitting before you tried to start it?

Float bowls dry seems odd, but fuel does evaporate.

20 seconds for fuel to come from the line. --Fuel pump stuffed.-- Hole in the fuel line, sucking air. Is there a smell of fuel under the car when it is running, or sign of a fuel leak anywhere?

[Captain Obvious]

today I decided to pull the top off the float resevior prior to starting. The float bowl was dry as a bone!!!

Haha! Well THERE'S your problem! That will unquestionably explain why it takes so much cranking to start the car. No mystery there.

So you're done with the "what", now how about the "why?":

1) WHY were the float bowls bone dry?

2) WHY were the fuel lines so empty that it took 20 seconds of cranking before you saw any fuel reaching the carbs?

I know it's warmer in AL than PA, but I can let my car sit for weeks without the bowls evaporating dry. As I mentioned earlier, I get a little evaporation over two weeks, but not much. Have you got the round tops that have the drain plug on the float bowls? Maybe they fuel is leaking past that plug and evaporating fast enough that it never reaches the ground.

As for the empty fuel lines... As soon as the pump stops moving, there will be no pressure in the lines. It's not like the 280s that attempt to keep the lines pressurized even with the car off. On the carb'd cars, no pump, no pressure. So is it possible that there is a siphon effect pulling fuel back into the tank when the fuel pump isn't running? The return line being lower than the supply and slowly pulling fuel past the check valves in the fuel pump? Just a WA theory...

It's can't be so hot that you're simply percolating (boiling) the fuel in the carbs and lines.

Could it?

[dltalfa]

The car had sat for almost a week since last starting. Gas shouldn't evapoarte inside the bowl in that short of a time.

There is no sign of a gas leak and no gas smell inside the garage.

I do have the carbs with the drain plugs,..but I walk past the car at elast 3 or 4 times everyday going i and ut of teh agrage. I would think that if the drain plug were leaking that bad,..surely I would have smelled something.

I'm inclined to think it is a syphoning effect as you mentioned.

[Captain Obvious]

I agree that the gas shouldn't evaporate that quickly, but I'm not coming up with any other answer. I've got that wild assed supposition that there might be some siphon effect with the lines, but with the bowls? No way. Once fuel is in the bowl, there's no way it's leaving that bowl unless it leaks out, evaporates out, or is pulled out by engine vacuum.

The engine isn't running, so that's not it. It should not evaporate bone dry in less than one week. That's not it. The only thing left is to be leaking out. :paranoid:

I, like you, would hope to smell something if it was leaking, but let me tell you a little story...

My carbs did not have bowl drains. I wanted bowl drains plugs, so I modified my carbs to include drain plugs and I used copper washers to seal my new drain plugs. It was two or three weeks since the last time I messed with the car, and I checked my bowl levels before I tried to start it. Unlike every other time I did this, the bowls were so dry that I couldn't see any gas through the sight glasses.

No fuel on the ground. No gas smell. Car has sat for longer than this, even in warmer weather, and hasn't done this before, so it clearly HAS to be the new drains I installed.

I reached up under the carbs, and there was an oily residue on the heads of the drain plugs. the gas had slowly leaked past the copper washers and had evaporated off the drain plug heads. Never hit the floor, but the entire bowl had leaked out and evaporated. That oil residue is what's left after you evaporate an entire bowl off the head of a small bolt. Didn't look like gas anymore.

The moral is... Check your drain plugs and the hoses that connect between the bowls and the nozzle for any kind of residue. Might not look like gas anymore, but might be a leak anyway.

I'm thinking that if you can keep your bowls full when you shut the engine off, you might not care that the lines have gone dry. A full bowl should easily run the engine long enough to get the pump on-line.