Some years ago, I had a Corvette and a Falcon. The Falcon was my daily driver and to be honest, I kinda liked her, "Farrah Falcon" was her name. I bought her for $750 and drove her for 70,000 miles before selling her. Thats before I gave her to my daughter for hs transportation...another story for sure!
Okay now you have the background here's the real story. Farrah used to like to sputter and run poorly sometimes for no reason at all. I checked everything, rebuilt the carb, the distributor, I mean I checked everything but Farrah being a girl just had a mind of her own.
One winter day, snow was on the ground and I was headed home from work. At a busy intersection Farrah started acting herself and decided it was time for a nervous breakdown. She sputtered, finally started and damn near killed me as the light turned red! I was furious...and somewhat scared even. Damn woman tried to kill me!
I was about a half mile from the local Ford dealer so I drove into the service bay and was met by the service writer. "How can I help you sir?" "This little car is going to kill me if I don't get her fixed...here's the story!" The service writer said, "Seems like you need a carb rebuild." I didn't tell him I'd already rebuilt the carburetor twice. He asked me to sign the service sheet after writing up the need for a carb rebuild. I told him I couldn't sign his service order. He asked why and I explained that I came in to get the car fixed, not rebuild the carb. All I want is the problem fixed, I don't care what it takes! He wrote under the carb rebuild, fix stalling problem. I signed the service order.
I got the dealer to take me home and went about my business as usual. Several days later I get this call from the dealer that Farrah is ready. I went to the dealer to pick up Farrah and decided the best thing was to take a test drive with the mechanic before accepting her back.
The mecanic agreed and off we went for the check ride. Farrah did her stuff at the very next intersection. Boy was I happy! Even Ford's ASC certified tech couldn't find the problem! Farrah went back to the Ford stable for another try.
Several days later after a big snowfall, Ford called me to say the car was ready. I went back and found the car still in a stall hooked up to a Sun Analyzer. The mecanic said, "I wanted to show you what the problem was!" He held up a wire splice! He said, "This fixed it!, a 5 cent splice!" He then explained the coil wire going to the firewall was broken inside the insulation from years of shake, rattle, and roll of the engine block. He finally found the problem by analyzing the coil current and realized it was very low. Once he knew what the problem was it only took a moment of checking the wiring harness to find the break.
Moral to the story...sometimes it isn't the carburetor!
As a side note to this, the mechanic rebuilt the carb then installed a new one when this didn't work. He installed a new distributor after some more troubleshooting. In the end, they changed just about everything but the engine. The last thing the mechanic said to me was, "I don't wanna ever see this little car again...take whatever parts are in the trunk and maintain it yourself!" Once at home I found half of the dealers parts inventory in my trunk. All for $110, the price of the rebuilt carburetor! I never had the nerve to take the car back. Farrah was well behaved for the rest of her life.
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