I am still trying to get my Golden Continental to idle. I did a couple more carburetor adjustments and went for a test drive. It ran fine when cold but when it warmed up it did a gentle backfire under load. I was planning on having the car inspected the next day. Well, I changed my mind.

I had put in new spark plugs a while ago, and I had noticed that the older plugs that I had pulled out were gapped tighter. The specks had said to set the gap at fifty thousands. The old plugs were gapped at forty five thousands. So I thought I would just reset the gap to forty five thousands and try again. Sometimes there are things that I just don’t understand.

When I removed the plugs to regap them I thought I would check the accuracy of the gauge. Turned out the spark plug gap gauge was reading five thousands too high. This is just a teachable moment. Double check your tools for accuracy. The old plugs and the new plugs were both gapped correctly. I had used a cheap tool and made good parts bad.

If I had simply put the new plugs in I would have been fine. But no, I had to over complicate the process and muck things up. It is hard to get things just right. In this case my plan backfired.

We will see how my next test drive goes.