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Old 23-02-05, 05:59
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Jordan Baker Jordan Baker is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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Default 12 volt

HI Dave

Thats a good point that Geoff raised about the 6 volt versus the 12 volt. On my carrier I have converted over to 12v. I know others on this board still keep their at 6 but I have found no problems with it a 12v.

I found that changing it over was really easy. The first thing to do, if you haven't yet, is get rid of the Old style coil that mounts to the distributor. Dennis Carpenter repro's make an adapter kit that bolts onto the top of the distributor and allows you to put in a modern coil. I used a Mallory high perfomence one from a car shop near me. I will provide the part # in a few days when I find the box. I then replaced all of the wiring in the carrier. Technically I really didn't need to but the stuff was original and there were lots and lots of repairs made to it over 60 years.

Stewart Loy suggested to me that I use screw terminals for all of my connections. He also suggested that I crimp them and then soldier and then use heat shrink tubing as a final protection. His idea worked so well that I once had a wire get caught in the fan belt. I had to cut the wire to get it out but the connections were still holding.

The next step would be converting the Generator over to 12v. I still have yet to do this on mine do to lack of money from spending on other "thingys that I just had to have". You could also just place an alternator on instead but it would require making up a mount for it to fit the fan extention and it wouldn't look stock

I ran my carrier all summer with the battery on this setup and I only had to get it recharged once. The only thing you would need to watch would be your 6v gauges. i haven't had to worry about that yet as I don't have any.

When I first got my carrier the mechanical fuel pump was not working. So my mechanic friend who got the engine running lent me an inline electric one. I never had any problems starting as the fuel was always ready. I setup a switch to control both the ignition and fuel pump and I would turn this on and let it sit for about 5-10 seconds. By that point the fuel was at the carb and I was ready to go. I would hit the starter and the engine would roar to life in about 4 seconds.

After I got my mechanical pump working I re-installed it. It was good but i liked the electric one better. The problem IMHO is that once turned off the pump looses pressure and then you need to crank the engine until pressure is built up again. The other problem is that unless the pump is in prime condition you will always have engine problems. Because the pump runs off of the engine it needs the engine runing well. But the engine wont run well unless the pump is pumping perfectly. It becomes a nice revolving issue that only results in a poorly running engine.

I hope you can find my experience useful and Im sure others will be able to provide more info then me as most of my knowledge came from reading their responses on this forum.
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Jordan Baker
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