51 Frazer will not move under load

[Doc]

It's been over four months now since I've posted about this car.  We were down for three months until we got a replacement axle shaft in the car from Rudy Phillips and got a new exhaust system on it. Two other things were supposed to have been done at a particular local shop relative to body work, but after nothing had been for two months, I went and got the car, which was an "interesting event" I must say. But to the problem. This car just will not move forward or backward under any load, like a ramp or small hill. It will idle ok and rev up ok and on a flat surface will move, but it is underwhleming. Up a hill forget it.
As you "may" recall from previous postings last year, the engine has been totally rebuilt with all new parts including carburetor, fuel pump, distributor components, plugs, wires, gas tank cleaned, filters, brakes, all that stuff. Timing checked. The choke plate is functioning and this is the second rebuilt carburetor on the car and no change in characteristics. The car will start and idle nut even after a 15-20 minute warmup with choke plate fully open, drop it Drive or Reverse, apply the pedal and the car dies. Any ideas?  Very frustrating!

[joefrazer]

Is it a hydramatic car? If so, is the transmission full? If so, it might be stuck clutches. Try getting the car rolling and then dropping it in gear and see what happens.

[Doc]

Yes, Hydramatic that was drained and refilled but no mechanical work performed on it. Histoty of the tranny unknown.  I'll try to get it up my driveway hill and then head back down and try that this weekend.  I've added no additives to the fluid.  Do not know if it work for clutches but for slipping, I can certainly testtify to Lucas tranny treatment as it cured a hydramatic on a Hudson right away. While we had the engine down, we wanted to get the tranny gone through but there was a 3-month backlog at the time and so this may indeed be the problem. But at least Hydramatic parts are readily available.

[Doc]

Hey Guys I really appreciate all the help. I have the problem solved and it's back to basics and a bit embarrasing. During the process of trying to get this car running, we had the vacuum advance disconnected and a plug in the bottom of the carburetor vacuum source. I found the plug that was installed in the bottom front of the carburetor was gone! You cannot see it unless you get down low and look. I overlooked it. Since it was sucking air and with the engine running I did not realize the opening was open to ambient air. When I installed a plug, the car started up immediately and idled well. I then took it out and up the driveway hill three times including the first time the car has shifted into 3rd. What a relief! Again, I appreciate all the suggestions and the dialog is what provided me incentive to go look again. Thanks. Tranny appears just fine and the car is finally driveable.

[Doc]

Update. Turns out plugging the open vacuum port did not fix the problem. I guess I made it up the hill because the car was fully warmed up and I kept my foot on the accelerator pedal rather vigorously. Turns out it's the timing. I tossed the timing light and hooked up a vacuum gauge and got only 17" Hg indicating retarded timing. I tried moving each plug wire one slot advanced and then adjusting the distributot back CW to compensate but based on the limitations of the distributor setup, that reduced the vacuum to just 14" and the car barely idled. I finally took the Dremel tool and elongated the passenger side bracket hole to allow the additional movement of the bracket and was able to get 19-20" vaccum and then up the hills with no problem. There was NO way to configure this distributor as on my other three '51 Frazers. The vaccum advance is rotated much more to the firewall than the others which point more towards the front of the car. Never had such a difficult time getting timing adjusted. And there is no room for any additional fine tuning until I replace my burned out Dremel tool and ream the other end of the elongated hole out some to allow further adjustment. At least now I think I finally have the care driveable, but then I thought that before.  I really dislike that two slotted adjustment distributor. So close, but so far.