Here's a success story. First a little history though....I got my 48 8N last summer and although I didn't do a full "restore" over the winter, I replaced/reworked whatever was broken or not working and repainted it. This board was an awesome source of information and without it I would have been lost in certain areas. The tips and tricks that I learned have been an educational experience. And since I could relate a lot better to the scenario based problems and solutions, I thought I would offer my own. I always seem to see a lot of fuel/electrical problems shared here. Here's mine.....I do have the front mounted distributor with a 12-volt conversion and an aftermarket Zenith carb. I rewired the entire electrical system (thanks Brian S. in IL) and replaced everything electrical on it. This was done while troubleshooting a carb problem that actually turned out to be the carb. The old "won't stay running without the choke pulled out" problem that I read a ton about. That's when the Zenith was purchased and from April of this year until last weekend, she's purred like a kitten. I had bush hogged a rough field for my dad, lots of bumps and holes and ran through a full tank of gas that day. In fact, she played out of gas sitting on the trailer cooling down while I was chaining her down. I don't know why, but I forgot and left the ignition switch on. When I stopped by the gas station on the way home, I noticed the switch was on and turned it off. (it couldn't have been more than 30 minutes so I figured no harm). Well, got her home and she wouldn't crank to get off the trailer. Getting gas but no spark. So I'm thinking maybe leaving the ignition switch on did do some harm after all. The next morning I went out and while looking everything over, I found the coil had a split running straight up the side of the case. Now that was weird. The crack had to have occurred while I was bush hogging. So why did it stay running but then wouldn't crank back up later that night? I still can't explain that one except for maybe it needs more "ummphhh" while starting than while running. Anyway I had the old coil that I had removed while troubleshooting the carb problem I talked about earlier. So I slapped it on and sure enough, she started. But I noticed that she was really hard to start and flooded much too easily. So I made my first mistake, I started tweeking the carburetor. She would run like a banshee for about 5 minutes and then die. Just like you cut off the ignition switch. But then again, sometimes she would sputter and pop and then die. So is it fuel or electrical? Sometimes she'd crank right back up, sometimes not. But even when I did get her cranked back up, she'd die in about a minute. I started leaning towards fuel because it sounded like I had stoppage in a line or filter. Took the fuel line off and had good flow. Hmmmm.....new carburetor, why would it take a dump now? And then I realized something Dell had said in one of his posts, 90% of so-called fuel problems are electrical. Then I shook my head cause I had forgotten the first rule of troubleshooting. If it ran good before and now runs bad....what has changed? or what has been changed? All of a sudden a suspect part popped into my head.....that old coil that I put on. Surely it couldn't be that simple, could it? I pulled off a plug wire and instead of a nice crisp blue spark, I had a reddish white spark. I hadn't even thought to check that cause even though she was hard to start, she did fire up and run (though not too long) after I put the original coil back on. So I went down to the local shop, picked up a new coil, put it on and she fired right up. Ran like crap but that's cause I fooled around with the carb. After adjusting the idle, did a little bit more bush hogging and adjusted the main needle til I got that right. I can't guarantee that this will solve your particular problem but maybe, just maybe, one day if you happen to run into this kinda problem, it'll help. Richie
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