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1969 Plymouth Satellite 4 Door, The Beast

69SatelliteGuy

69SatelliteGuy

Well-Known Member
Local time
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Hey guys, new around here. A few years back I had a '68 Belvedere 4 door that was a HUGE project. Too huge, so I sold it and bought a '67 VW. I'm just about done restoring that now and have had my eye on another Plymouth for a while. A '69 came up a couple months back and so after some negotiating it was mine. It's surprisingly solid, underside seems really good, needs the quarters done. I'm a bodyman though so it isn't that big a deal to me. PO replaced the gas tank and some other stuff, but I needed to do a wheel cylinder and alternator. Here's a few pictures.
06442159-4f6a-4bef-9970-728421479128-jpeg.jpg

0cf2feed-7cb4-4b5b-8d13-13311d9baa35-jpeg.jpg

So I'm obviously going for a classic cop car. The end plan is an Adam-12 replica, I know, it may be ridiculous, but that's my plan. Right now though I just want to enjoy it as a driver. I have a red light and that's enough haha.
Anyway, I'm having a few issues and could use some help. I took it out last week and it was fine. Drove pretty well and what not. Well I went out again and it died. No start. It's been a week and I still can't get it going. I've got spark, fuel, air. I've changed the plugs, wireset, set the point gap, tried the timing all over the place. It just won't run. I've got a new ballast resistor to try now, but I'm kind of at a loss. It's got a 318 with a Carter 2 barrel I'm not really a mechanical guy, I shape filler and shoot primer lol. Any ideas to what could be up would be appreciated!
That's the car though, I like it. Four doors are cool IMO, you don't see many around.
 
Coil may be getting to hot if the ballast resistor is bad. May be casing your shutting down.
 
Does it fire at all?
A bad ballast resistor would cause no spark in the "run" position.
You can test this by putting the key in run and jumping the starter relay (Yellow to Red post) and test for spark.
If you have a good sharp blue spark then you may have a jumped timing chain.
You can try advancing the timing a bunch and see if it fires, if so the chain jumped.
 
So before, the coil was reading 0.0 on the multimeter. New ballast resistor and it's reading around 9. I started cranking and it did sound like it was firing, but when I let go of the key it didn't start/stay running. I'll try advancing the timing and see what happens.
 
Timing chain jumped some teeth? Check rotor action and position.
Mike
 
Unfortunately he made timing changes already so that may be hard to judge now.
But if the rotor was like 15 degrees late then a jumped chain would be a certainty.
 
So I had the engine at TDC and the rotor was just a tad off of the #1 plug wire, can’t imagine that’d 1/4” would be enough to mess things up.
 
A 1/4" past is about right. If it starts easily then that's a good sign.
 
It may just be flooded if the ballast was bad.
Try slowly pressing the pedal to the floor. Don't move it and crank a few times.
See if she takes off just back off to about third throttle when it startsand let it run kind of fast. It may run crappy for a couple minutes.
Do not pump the accelerator pedal.
 
It started! Buddy and I decided to do the points and condenser, and it fired right up. Set the timing, got it idling, and it sounds good. Took it around the block and no issues. So in all, it has new points, condenser, plugs, wire set, and a ballast resistor. That's on top of the new alternator.
 
New problem. When I put the car in gear, it stalls out. This didn't happen before. Right after I got it running again I was able to take it around the block and stuff. I have no clue what this could be.
 
Long time, no update. In January, I put a Holley Street Dominator intake and a 4160 on. I haven't enjoyed the car since. Turns out my Holley was an emissions carb so off it came and I rebuilt a regular 1850. It literally broke in pieces when I put it on so I took it as a sign. Off came the intake and carb and back went the stock intake and Carter 2-barrel. The Holley idled at around 1200 and couldn't not stall in gear. Without changing anything else, my 2-barrel has brought that down to like 600 and I don't have to wait for it to warm up. Night and day. Yesterday, I started building an exhaust. My car has always had a sucky one and I plan on putting duals on eventually when I build my 383. It's just basic straight pipe cut and welded with some pre-made bends to get over the rear end but it's turning out fine. It's gonna have a thrush muffler. I found some dog dish caps from a member on here and threw those on too.
 
New update! I finished my VW after a long hassle at DMV. I had another project to do before getting deep into this, but I found some frame damage on that and it's gonna cost serious money so it's on the back burner for now. That means I'm focusing on this. It has a new timing chain, cover, and a fresh aluminum radiator now and I have settled all coolant leaks. I did some really jank bodywork to the rear quarters knowing that I'm redoing it very soon, basically I just wanted it to look better for the few shows it'll get to. Gonna prime it tomorrow, but I noticed today when I took it for its first voyage in months that something seemed off. When the car warmed up, the idle dropped low. Too low to me, like audibly around 400-500 maybe. I investigated and this is what I found at the carb, is this weird?
F315F799-18F6-4257-958E-9613BC408409.jpeg
 
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