51 kaiser

[ken taplin]

Just finished a motor job on my '51 and from the way it starts.runs and sounds it would seem to be perfect but I only get 8mpg. This seems excessive to me as other K&F cars I have had got over 20. Can't find any leaks and the choke is coming off. Could it be a problem with the duplex fuel pump? It is new from Kaiser-Willeys.

[Kenn Evans II]

There are a couple of things to check, this might not help but maybe?  Start with recleaning the air filter and refilling it with oil, if no improvement, double check your timing and idle fuel mixture and idle speed.  In doing your motor job, did you change the cam? Do you know what your economy was before working on the car?  There is an article under "cruising speed" a couple of discussions back they may also help.    Good luck

[dpledger]

All the items suggested above are worth checking. My long term observation has been that of those listed the one best able to provide what appears to be good performance and still slug the gas is an incorrect carb mix setting. I on several occasions have quickly doubled or more gas mileage just by tweaking the adjusting screws. As the '51K has a two barrel carb, there are two adjusting screws, and they need to be synched in order to obtain maximum performance. Procedure is to attach a vacuum gauge, and then fiddle with the screws until an optimal reading is obtained. Would think that any other problems affecting mileage this much would be hurting performance as well. Of course a fuel leak ahead of the carb would do this nicely too, along with burning your car up at some point. This might not show up with the engine not running, so need to check exhaustively while it is.

If you have put on a few miles since overhaul, pull a plug and see if carbon is forming. This will indicate too much fuel or too little air.

[kenneth]

 8)Hi this is something I heard before, it seems that its possible to get the camshaft timing wrong on these engines, it will start and run but the fuel economy will be terrible, could be worth a check!

[HJ-ETEX]

The 226 has a strange way of aligning the cam & crank gears. Most modern engines have index marks on each gear that must be aligned. (On Chevy SB V8s this is TDC on #6 cylinder which is another story.) On the 226 the index marks are pointed at approximately the 2 o'clock position and there has to be 9 links of the chain between the 2 marks. You rotate the crank several times to make sure the 9 link spacing stays the same. The notation '9 links' is stamped on the face of the motor mounting plate.

[HJ-ETEX]

I once rebuilt a Chevy 250 6 cylinder. I even bought a new cam gear. Well the engine had poor power and the vacuum was low. I pulled out the cam and compared the new gear to the old gear and found the index marks were 2 teeth different between the 2 gears! I put the old gear back on and the engine ran the way it should.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

There appears to be a trick to gear alignment.  Check out the KAISER-FRAZER SERVICE MANUAL put out by the factory for the 1951 Kaiser and 1951 Frazer and check out the engine repair section, as well as some of the Service Bulletins on the engine that were considered current information during the 1951 model year.