| Potholes Ever had an odd problem that you spent months trying to fix ? You finally discover the solution and it certainly wasn’t in the service manual. You have a P15-D24 pothole ! Share your experience by sending an email to info@p15-d24.com . Metallic ping from the bell housing Occasionally after driving for 15 or 20 minutes I would hear a metallic ping from under the floorboard. The frequency would vary with engine speed. However nothing seemed wrong with the engine or transmission. When I stopped and restarted sometimes the noise would go away, sometime not. Finally I tracked it down to the starter bendix. While driving, the bendix gear would vibrate and move toward the flywheel ring gear, sometimes enough to make contact and create a metallic ping. When I would restart the bendix gear moved back from the ring gear. Cleaning the bendix gears fixed the problem. Erratic Idle Speed (Plymouth only) Ever come to a stop sign and have the idle speed vary between 650 RPM and 950 RPM for no reason ? The fix was having at least 1/16 inch of free play in the manual throttle cable on the dash. If you don’t have any free play as the engine moves on its mounts it can tension the throttle cable, changing the idle. Whistle During Deceleration When coming off a freeway off ramp one afternoon a loud whistle started in the engine compartment. I couldn’t duplicate the condition standing still so it went on for weeks. I finally discovered tightening the two carburetor mounting bolts stopped the vacuum leak at the gasket between the carburetor and intake manifold. This only occurred during deceleration when the throttle plate was closed. Mysterious Misfire Driving home from work one afternoon my P15 suddenly developed a misfire and the smell of burning rubber. Opening the hood revealed the Evr-Dry sparkplug boot on cylinder #3 was melting along with the plug wire connector. I limped home on 5 cylinders. The next day I started the engine up and heard a loud rhythmic popping sound. Opening the hood revealed the ceramic top of plug # 6 moving up and down like a valve ! I pulled all the plugs and 3 of the 6 Champion JY45 had separated where the ceramic insulator went into the metal casing. The #3 plug was allowing hot gas to blow up and melt the plug wire. I replaced all the plugs with AC 45s and the car ran great again. If you use Champions you might want to inspect them a regular basis as the plugs all looked normal before they suddenly failed, with no rust or other obvious physical damage. Clunky Clutch For years after I got my P15 the clutch pedal would always make a loud "clunk" when you pressed it down. Clutch operation was fine, and throwout bearing free play was on the money. Adjusting the clutch overcenter spring did nothing to get rid of the noise. Finally, while replacing a master cylinder, I tore down the pedal assembly and clutch torque shaft. The balls of the torque shaft ride on spherical shaped split bronze bushings. On one side half of a bushing was missing. The clunk was the pivot ball rattling inside the remaining bushing. NAPA had replacement bushing inserts for about a buck and I was back on the road with a smooth and quiet clutch pedal. Sticking Brake When I first started to restore my 1948 Dodge D25C Club Coupe, one of the first things I did was to completely rebuild the brake system. I honed out all 6 brake cylinders as well as the master cylinder. New kits were purchased and installed. New brake shoes replaced the old ones and the drums were turned to match. (Very important to make sure shoes are a snug fit because if they are not it is next to impossible to adjust the shoes with the anchor bolts). So everything had been replaced, repaired, or re-used after cleaning. Brakes should work perfectly. Right? Kind of!!! The brakes stopped the car beautifully and I couldn't wish for better stopping power. However, the car would stay stopped for about 5 minutes before I could move it again. This would cause a lot of trouble in any kind of traffic. I discovered that the passenger side front brake was for some reason staying locked and would not let the wheel turn. After about 5 minutes this problem would disappear and I could move the car - until the next time I stopped. I had to use the handbrake to stop the car when I was moving it around the garage. So, I thought to myself that I must have screwed something up in one of the wheel cylinders on the passenger front. Took everything apart and things looked good. When everything was back together the same problem existed. I then put in different brake springs thinking maybe the originals weren't strong enough to bring the shoes back. Nope. I wondered if the other cylinders could be affecting this one in some way but I didn't think so. However, I didn't manage to talk myself out of it and pulled all of them apart too. Nothing. Everything was good. What next? The problem had not gone away but my patience was rapidly disappearing. All of the above had taken place over about a month and was starting to get extremely aggravating. Okay, it had to be the brake pedal return spring was not strong enough or the pedal was jamming in some strange way. I was getting desperate. Nothing was wrong there. I was sure that it was not the master cylinder because surely that would affect all the brakes. However, in desperation I mentioned my problem to an old time mechanic in the car club which is something I've now learned is the very first thing you do when you have an incurable problem. He told me he knew what the problem was without even looking at my car. He told me to check the master cylinder and make sure the small hole in the bottom of the resevoir was clean and free of any dirt. It can be seen when you take the filler plug out and should be direcly below it. Small hole? What small hole was all I could think. So, I took the filler plug out and looked for the hole. Couldn't see it for the cloudy fluid which was clean when I put it in. I finally took the master cylinder off the car (always a fun job and bless the engineer who first designed the one that is on the firewall) and disassembled it. Still no hole. I got a very sharp and strong pin and started poking around and eventually found a soft spot and kept working on it. Lo and behold a hole the size of the letter "o" appeared. I figured that I hadn't cleaned the cylinder well enough as the car had sat for year and as the fluid dried up this hole got plugged. (Always have any cylinder tanked before working on them or buy new ones is the best policy.) This small hole allows the pressure to be relieved when the brake pedal is released and unless fluid can flow easily through it one or more of your wheel cylinders will lock up until that pressure is released. On my car there must have been a very slight flow as the wheel cylinder would eventually release after several minutes. Moral of the story - most problems have a simple solution and old time mechanics are friends worth having. By Robert King-Brown |
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Copyright 2000-1999 G. Koldjeski |