How did it ever run?….

Time for an update on the Model A project. I drove it around for a bit, now it’s time to start getting the body squared away. I started by moving the cowl back and lowering the steering column to fit. All of this is mock up and may change as I see fit, but for now this is pretty much where I want the pieces.

This is what it look like with the cowl and steering in the stock position….

The seat is in the same place, only the cowl and steering column have changed. Moving the cowl back will give me a longer hood look that I am fond of. After playing with the location and look of things I thought I would remove the ignition switch and overhaul it since it doesn’t turn the car off when in the off position. The ignition switch connects into the side of the distributor on the engine by way of an armored cable. You can see it in the following picture..

The rusty cable looking thing on the lower right is the ignition switch cable. I wasn’t quite sure how it connects into the distributor, so I figured I would take the top off and see what I could see. There were two things that surprised me. First one was the distributor rotor…

The metal tab on the right is supposed to be bonded to the the other metal piece on top. This is what carries the ‘spark’ from the coil to the spark plugs. The whole thing rotates to make everything happen, and how it worked the whole time I was driving it is beyond me. Between the carb float that never floated and now this, how did it ever run the first time we started it?

The second surprise was what I found under the rotor..

Yeah….. What the heck… Why not a few wasps and a nest. Thank goodness they were all dead.

Oh, and I still haven’t removed the ignition switch.

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