| [GMCnet] My first GMC adventure - long, but has some interesting distributor cover finagling [message #346349] |
Sun, 11 August 2019 19:54  |
Jeff Luke
Messages: 12
Registered: August 2019
Karma:
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Junior Member |
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We did it! My first GMC trip in our project coach 77 Royale. Celebrate!
This is our story. (shared on facebook too)
My brother, my 2 boys and I traveled 600 miles to MI, pick up our coach and
bring it back to MA this weekend. Huge road trip adventure! :-)
I couldn't have done it without my pit crew, the wisdom of this group, Jim
Bounds and Mike Thomas. You guys all rock! My wife wanted to come but she
broke a leg and is not able to adventure just now ;-)
We prepared as much as we could remotely by scheduling new new tires, air
bag, coolant pump, oil change, fuel pump, and a lot of little tings Thanks
Mike!
We set out just after noon Saturday and in minutes our first discovery of
the day was the alternator wasn't charging so off to the parts store! Jim
Bounds provided the right part number for me (THANK YOU JIM) and my brother
installed it in the parking lot. We also discovered a generator fuel leak
and replaced the battery cables to reduce resistance.
Rolling again we crossed Ontario headed to NY stopping at about 200 miles
to fuel. Once across the border our adventure started to get lively. We had
a backfire episode and managed to get off the I-90 interstate just in time
to stall, exit the ramp and get to the side of the highway.
Symptom - we were going down a gentle grade so let off the gas a bit
followed by an uphill push. We couldn't restart, we thought it was a
flooding issue so treated it like a bowl adjustment problem and my brother
disassembled the carb and put it back together by flashlight. We managed to
eventually restart but it ran roughly.
We had 2 more episodes during the night where we thought we were flooding
the carb, eventually restarting UNTIL we backfired out a muffler and could
barely get the coach off the highway into a truck plaza.
We were an hour from home and unable to restart, replaced ignition module
and coil, bypass fuel pump
and anything else we could think of. We also were burning black clouds of
smoke and really not finding any options. Time to call Jim Bounds again.
Jim described how the timing gear can slip a tooth and throw the timing out
of kilter. We needed new spark plugs because ours were fouled and we needed
to attempt to adjust the distributor to a new angle to allow us to at least
get some combustion going again and get us to get home. (our chase vehicle
made a run to 4 different part stores in the area to get plugs and some
other parts we might need for the remainder of the trip)
It worked!!!!!! I am sure Jim can explain it better, but we got it started,
headed out on the interstate with my brother hanging over/in the engine
adjusting the distributor about 30 degrees until we stopped the very scary
backfires and had enough power to travel at least 50-60 MPH. Oh, the
muffler was still blown so it was god awful loud and smelly in there. Once
running as best we could get it, we put the cover back on the engine and
didn't stop until we made it home.
We are tired but all had a wonderful adventure!!!! we can hardly wait to
get this coach back together so we can have even greater memories down the
road.
We have a lot of work before us and we are looking forward to great trips
down the road.
The difference between adventure and adversity is attitude.
Jeff Luke,
77 Project Royale
Western MA
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