401 Running on 6 cylinders

[dagm]

Howdy, It is not running on cylinder 2 and 8, It does run quite smooth on the other six. I got spark and the intake lifters seems to open up and the intake runners are free. Could the timing be wrong, any sugestions?

[Mark Ascher]

Bad plugs
Bad plug wires
Carbon tracks in the cap, or bad cap
vacuum leak
Toasted valve - do a compression check on 2 & 8

Should be fairly straightforward to "nail" down.

Mark

[dagm]

Mark,

I forgott to mention that the compresion is good, 188 and 190 I changed plugs and leads, cap is new. Now I took the Intake of and I found that the intake gasket was not installed properly and the bolts were not tight, so it might be as you suggest a vacum leak. What vacum should I normally get?

Regards
Dag

[Dan K]

Was it running well before? You might pull the intake and valley pan and check for broken exhaust side pushrods. I had a similar problem recently. Dan

[BuickStreet]

Look at the bright side. At least now the Ford's will stand a chance and you'll have a killer come back to their lame excuses for losing "...yeah? Well I was only running on six cylinders...what's your excuse?" :grin:

[dagm]

I looked at the pushrods and they seems to be ok, I bought the car a 63 Riviera from the USA and someone has been working on the engine, it was not running when I got it. Is it possible to get the camshaft wrong ore something else inside the engine so it only runs on 6 cylinders???
Dag,

[Dan K]

You might pull the driver's side valve cover and slowly turn the crank with a wrench and watch the pushrods and valves on 2 and 8. Pull the passenger side cover if it's not a royal pain(a/c car) and the dist. cap to make sure that the distributor is set right to fire on one when one is on the compression stroke. Also, I guess I should add: make sure that you wired the front passenger cylinder as number one.

[Doug Short]

Put a vacuum gauge on a manifold fitting. You should be pulling about 20 inches of vacuum. Check your firing order as well and insure your valve lash is correct. The valves/rockers should be moving, if not, you may have some flat cam lobes.
Hope this helps,
Doug :bglasses: