I got the ignition system sorted on a 330GT but something still wasn’t right. Sure, we found the broken wire to the distributor, and the out of phase ignition points in one of the distributors, but we still couldn’t get the car to idle correctly. The car seemed to pull well on acceleration, but no matter what we did at idle, the carbs wouldn’t respond to our tweaks. The Weber carbs on these cars are notorious for worn throttle shafts that causes air to suck through these openings, fouling up the tuning at idle, but no matter what kind of turning we did on the idle screws, there was no change?!

When I took off the carburetors to take a closer look, I found the culprit! In order to seal up a warped baseplate on these carburetors, a previous shop used a bunch of silicone sealant, but what they didn’t know was they had also blocked off the idle circuits for these carbs to idle properly! There are perfect impressions in the silicone made from the idle passageways. We could have unscrewed the idle screws to pour raw fuel into the carb, but it wouldn’t have helped with blocked passageways! I have to admit, that was a new one.

I started tuning the carbs on the Daytona we have at the shop, and I’ve been stumped by one little issue after another! First it was that intermittent fuse issue where the fuse overheated and stopped the fans from working, and then while I was tuning the carbs, the whole car cut out! What the %$*#? Most of the electrics cut out and I wasn’t getting anything through the fuse panel. I could get the engine to fire up when I hot wired the MSD boxes, so the Boxes were still working. I took a closer look at the ignition switch, and I found a mysterious grey wire leading off under the dash…

The wires led to a secret kill switch, and when I jiggled the switch with the ignition switch turned on, I could hear the fuel pump trying to run. While I was tuning the car, this switch decided now was the time to fail.

When I pulled out the switch, I could see the wires were overheating, and the same was happening inside the switch. I could see the plastic casing had heated up and was deforming from the heat. I eliminated the kill switch, the associated wiring, and restored this car back to stock. What good is a kill switch if I kills the car when you don’t want it to? Now, where was I? Oh yeah, trying to get the carbs tuned!