Last Indian

Wrongway, when you pull the pump tomorrow, see if you can take a flashlight & mirror and look in the opening where the pump goes up towards the cam. See if you can see the cam eccentric and which end is the open end, I.E. towards the front or back!

Frosty I won’t even begin to act like I know! I think you know I have done and still do a lot with engines, but most of that as I said was always with Chevys & Buick! It’s been a long time since it was a actual Pontiac motor! So I do forget! Don’t say a word 🖐️ about old! Still a pump is a pump and fuel is fuel, duh! Watching and listening to wrong way, something just wasn’t right with what was happening or how it was not pumping! You may or quite possibly will be right! Not being there I can only step through it one thing at a time! Is it possible that the eccentric is in wrong? Not located in the correct spot? You know shifted over to one side some how?

You’re not an idiot buddy! I haven’t worked on a Pontiac motor in a long time! I’m use to Chevy & Buick's! It appears that neither the 428 or the 400 use a rod, but there is a difference in the fuel pumps, I’m particularly the lever! NAPA shows a NNP B0167P for a 428 where the 400 uses a NNP B0208P unit. I would believe this is your problem! You need to get the right pump. The lever of the one you have is being push just slightly, but not enough to actually pump fuel!

I do believe that is correct as long as you are talking hard top to hard top or sedan to sedan!

That’s the pressure side of the pump! So it could cause the leak down, but I would expect it to also leak fuel when it pumped fuel. So it’s a little iffy. It might leak air and not fuel, but without being there I can’t say.

Now that OLD - - I’m proud of did every one of those and then some!

No! You need a flair fitting & that’s not a flair fitting. What happens if you leave the other line you have block open? Go to NAPA see if they can get you the correct pump. Not all parts are interchangeable, so there may be enough of a difference between the two pumps that’s causing the problem.

The return could be an issue not sure how the valuing is setup internally. So I think possibly you could try this to see if it makes a change. Open the return outlet, fit it with a fitting and run it to a can. If you ran the cam 15-20 minutes at 2000 rpm it’s broke in!

Short answer, yes! Long answer it would depend on what if anything was damaged! Pull the pump & rod! Inspect the rod for damage/wear/galling. Did you break in the cam correctly, use the right break in lube, just covering bases here! But somethings changed by what you’re indicating!

Well I need to get started on wet sanding and rubbing out the parts I painted, but I started the new idea for the plenum cover instead, for now anyway!

Let me make sure I understand what you said! Carb full of fuel, the engine started and ran till the carb ran out of fuel, right? Then with the fuel pump no real pumping of fuel, right? if that is correct than I have to go back to what I said before! Either the push rod from the cam to the fuel pump lever is the wrong one and to short, the fuel pump, doubtful, but needs checked is the wrong one so the lever isn’t the right length or the eccentric on the cam is bad or the cam is somehow not right! What I see and by what I think you are saying about what’s happening is this. The pump never real gets fuel filled in it! Which means the majority of the space is air and since it can’t pull fuel into the fluid side of the diaphragm air from the outlet side re-enters that space, thus the air bubbles. Next two things to do. Take the pump off take out the push rod and measure it, then you need to find out what the correct measurement is for the right rod for your motor! Also if you have a vise hold the pump in the vise. Connect a hose to the inlet side of the pump the other end of the hose put in the gas can or any liquid for the matter. On the outlet side take a hose run it to a bucket can whatever! Now push the fuel pump lever by hand repeatedly see if it will pump the fluid through the pump! If so, the problem is definitely the pump, the push rod or the cam!

Ok then! We need to continue and find a resolution to this issue before moving on! leaving the pump out of the equation, let’s test the carb. Get a small syringe or very small funnel and fill the carb through the air horn vent tube, see pic! When the bowl is full some fuel will come out of the tube, that’s ok! Then pull the accelerator back as Kiwi suggested and see if the accelerator pump squirts fuel. If it does try to start the car as normal. If it runs, let run till it dies. Fill it again and repeat. Also I see as I’m writing this JustA has answered, so try what he says as well! That well prove whether or not the fuel pump works! If the pump works and the carb takes fuel through the air horn and fires! Your problem is with the carb, most likely the float! If it won’t fire it is still most likely the carb, but the jets are blocked! Both may be due to today’s fuel! Alcohol in fuel wreaks havoc with fuel systems and carbs if you don’t use additives to get rid of the alcohol! Sorry it’s just a fact of life today. FYI if there’s a question as to the vent tube it’s the small tube that is slant cut at the top portion of the carb air horn.

Ok, this might sound nuts, but remember I’m not there, so I can only hypothesize! I think it is one of two things! Either there is something wrong with the cam or the push rod that runs from the cam to the pump lever. So we need to eliminate the pump for this test. Disconnect all the connections from the pump, no inlet no outlet, or just take it off and run a block off plate. Now please be carful with this net part! Take your fuel can and place it higher than the carb. Take the Tygon tubing and weight it in some way so the hose goes to the bottom of the gas can! Siphon the gas down the hose and connect it to the carb. This will gravity feed the carb. See if this resolves the engine starting and running issue. If it does, than the problem is with the pump, the push rod for the pump or the cam! Let’s hope it’s not the cam!

Yeah! What JustA said! Make sure you take some video of it to share!

Looking very sharp! Before the snow flies ? Maybe?🤞

For a 428, no that is not a big cam. Vac should be, with good rings, valves etc. a 19” to 21” motor. So after the fuel is figured out we’ll tackle the vacuum issue! In the mean time, what, if anything was the last thing you did to the motor?

OK! You guys are really starting to aggravate me with the old jokes! And iffff I’m sorry what were we taking about? Oh, oh yeah submarines, so what kind of sandwich was it!

Well unless you have a big overlap cam with high lift, the vac in idle should be at least 18, a good motor without that big cam and good ring 20 to 21! So let’s start with what might be first! The fuel! I would not be surprised that you do have a leak/brake/crack in the line somewhere between the tank and the fuel pump! So, I know this is a pain, but you need to rule things out one by one! Take the line off at the pump. Take a short length of line 6”, with a fitting that connects to the pump! Take some Tygon hose long enough to go in to a gas can, that’s obviously full of gas! See if you still have the problem. If not you need to replace the fuel line from the pump to the tank. Also while you’re at it check the gas cap and make sure that vac pressure relief valve works. Let me know what happens with that and we’ll go from there!

I have no doubt mate! Can’t wait to see the finish project & what you think of them!

Frosty & Kiwi, there is also Octane lighting they also make and sell non sealed beam headlights. They sell a set of 5 3/4 round that look a little bit like the Cibie lights, but much much cheaper. They take a H4 bulb as well, so you could than add the HID lights to these housings. This would make them more efficient than a stock headlamp. https://www.octanelighting.com/

Kiwi, I think it’s great that you ask the question! Most folks view a light as a light and nothing more, but as I said, they are so much more! Even a simple table lamp with a shade is quite involved when you get right down to it! The height determines in what range it will eminent from, the wattage is candle power, then the coating of the glass regulates to some degree color and opacity and the shade? Well what the material is, it’s design, whether pleated, straight etc. determines dispersing of the light! A parabola is a curve where any point is at an equal distance from: a fixed point (the focus ), and. a fixed straight line A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direction, usually constructed so that it can be swiveled about. I’m sure you’ve seen this type of light before maybe at a grand opening or the like, but they actually date back as far as the 1880s. Yes that’s 18 not 19! Before I forget, the above not only relates to the purpose of the parabolic, but also the advent of the HID light because it is a carbon arc light! While it is somewhat different it is still a carbon arc light! If you have flood lights in your house they are a parabolic and the shape of the parabolic ( read that as angle ) determines whether it’s a flood or a spot light. The wider the angle the wider the light beam the narrower the angle the narrow the beam. Also the reflected light comes off of the opposite side of the parabolic, but don’t confuse the refraction I mentioned with the parabolic itself, that comes when it passes through the lens. So like in the “50”s when they put cutoff plates on car headlights that’s why they were on the top! In this way they would block the light beam coming off the bottom side of the parabolic which actually goes up! Like wise this is way the block off plate in a projector headlight is on the bottom! Because it’s magnified through a one sided convex lens the image aka, light is upside down

’ll do my best to help. I would like to preface this with my input to how complexed lighting is, which in many ways is why it’s such a shambles today for car head lights! Light in of itself is a science, a very complexed science! Light is the only reason we can see! Our eyes are one of the most remarkable gifts we have! Nothing, absolutely nothing can duplicate them! No matter how close we get with sensors, they can’t duplicate our eyes and to get even remotely close it takes multiple sensors that do different functions! The human eye can at one glance discern distance, intricate color, shading, texture, soft, sharp, vapors and so much more! All of this is because of light! Next to locks lighting fixtures are the oldest know inventions along with different fuel to obtain brighter illumination! By the mid 20th century we had achieved fairly good road illumination given the limitations of incandescent bulbs & their Kalvin color light band. The parabolic design had and has proven to be the most optimal reflector for light refraction and in a round design! So all we needed was a better light source, one that could mimic daylight! But no! New, dare I say less capable engineers that couldn’t see to the end of their noses with 5500 degrees of Kalvin found it was more fitting to carve up every headlight fixture into some abortion that didn’t come close to resembling the very oldest of light fixtures. The point here is that headlights starting in the late “70”s kept getting increasingly worse because they kept chopping the parabolic up, reducing its size, making it only a piece of a round parabolic and magnifying it with non optical grade glass! Which meant light was lost as well as distorted! The Cibie takes all the light that comes from the parabolic and concentrates it in a smaller focal window! So now for you guys, Frosty, Kiwi and any others. Since you have old 7” or 5 ¾ headlights that are true parabolic housings you can have the best of both worlds! The Cibie’s of today may not be what they were when Cibie owned them, but they would still be heads above anything else out there. There is a guy named Danel Stern, see the attached link. https://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html It appears he can get you the Cibie lights. I would than recommend getting 5500 to 6000 Kalvin color hid lights! These will consume less power and run cooler then standard H4 bulbs. Since your cars don’t run computers there are no issues for you to get around so you don’t need cad/cam canceling adaptors or the like. If you talk to a good HID company like Retrofit Source you should be able to tell them what you’re doing and get what you want. When you’re done you should have a very clean installation and a setup that looks stock!

Here’s a place in the states that sells H4 hid systems. They are a good outfit, I’ve bought from them many times in the past. https://www.theretrofitsource.com/ The thing that’s great about the Z beams is as I said they were around before projector headlights, but they are also quite superior! The cut of the 24% lead crystal glass lens uses true optic opacity to direct the light in the Z type pattern. In this way it is both pure in replication of the pattern and wave length of light! Where as a projector headlight uses a magnification system, a parabolic housing and a cutoff plate to direct direct the pattern and light wave length. The projection system displays a variable pattern in intensity, focus and width depending on what the distance is in front of you! Like a movie projector has to be focused to make the picture clear, except a projector headlight doesn’t have the variable focus element. Also the optical clarity of the magnifying lens in all of the projector headlights I’ve looked at, even the high end cars like BMW, Mercedes, etc are not truly optical grade glass! Which means there is not only a distortion of the wavelength of light, but the true lumens that pass through the lens! All bulbs that list their lumens do so without a fixture influence, fyi!

Kiwi, hard to say from a picture, but Valeo did acquire Cibie in 1978, I think it was “78”? So they very possibly are Z beams. The attached link gives some information about it all. My 1969 Z had Z beams starting in 1974. As I stated earlier they were hands down the best lights I ever have seen! Some of today’s lights are good, but for the most part, most headlights today still either lack the adjustment ability to really make them effective for the driver without blinding the oncoming traffic or just plain lack the technology as a light fixture. So most folks do what people do! Throw more power in it! Which only makes it worse for oncoming traffic, but you know, screw the other guy who cares! Z beams did better and before what projection headlights do! The throw a cutoff light beam! And when I say a cutoff light I mean absolutely bright daylight and then right above that night! I would assume that if you could get a HID light with the right base that you could use them in the Z beam and quite likely improve the overall performance of the Z beams because of the Kalvin color! The only downside I saw to the light was that the metal housing was plated like a mirror with silver, that for me over time deteriorated like a mirror does. So the lead crystal lens is adhered to the metal housing. So I separated the two, stripped the housing down to bare steel and sent it out to be copper/nickel plated! Which came out pretty cool because it had just a slight rose tint in the right light because of the nickel. https://valeoservice.cld.bz/valeo-CIBIE-brochure/2-3/ Not real obvious, but you can see a bit of the rose tint here.

AND the Devil still reigns supreme! 🤭!