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RE: Overheating '67


It has been my experience, hoo boy, that vapour lock is a load of
codswallop.  It is a fictitious condition dreamed up by incompetent
mechanics at the dawn of the automotive era as a placebo for a condition
they couldn't explain.

Vapour lock; the condition when the fuel spuriously gets so hot that it
vapourises, either inNùžþl line, or the float bowls themselves.  The
theory works, but I have sincere doubts that gas that had vapourised
wouldn't go ka-blooey anyway.

The idea behind the 'remedy' is to cool the gas line.  One is supposed to
wrap tin-foil around the feed line (and on old American cars these are
primarily metal, with flexible hose only at the joints), and pinning it in
place with clothes pins.  The importance of them being spring-clips comes
from a time, gone since the 40's, when clothes pins were made of potmetal;
effecting a 'radiator,' cooling the fuel (and, consequently if you have
metal clips, you don't need tin-foil).

I suggest that you listen to a person that is a fuel-engineer for an
absolute, but vapour lock in my experience is fictitious.  My father (a
mechanic of 40 years on cars and planes) scoffs at the mention of the
phrase, claiming he'd never seen a case of vapour lock that couldn't be
cured by fixing the real problem.  But my dad's more opinionated even than
I.

James 'Sand In The Face' MacNaughton  -- Did I laugh!

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