Well after all my backfiring and missing that came on recently, I decided to
extract my distributer and stop the top half of the distributer floating around
by glueing it down to the base with super glue - sounds like a very crude
operation, but the distributer no longer tilts on cornering. Anyway, I was
really happy last night when I reset the points and couldn't wait to hear the
roar again - no such luck - nothing. I took the distributer cap of and couldn't
see any sparking across the points - hmm, I wonder what's wrong now????
Anyway, my first guess was that the top half of the distributer was no longer
earthing correctly, since it probably had a nice glue insulator. I didn't have
a multimeter of any kind at the time, so just stuck an earth wire onto the
casing and tried again - still no luck. Hmm - it got me thinking really hard!
I decided that I'd be better waking up in the morning and reassessing the
problem with a clear head. This morning I checked the wiring and the points in
the sunlight (yes - first day of sun since I've been back in the UK!).
Everything seemed good, so decide that it's time for me to purchase a multimeter
and some wire and connectors. Once purchased I begin to continuity check all the
wires in and around the distributer and find that one of the wires in the
distributer is flakey - yey, I think I've found my problem. I need a soldering
iron to replace the wire and therefore have to go out and purchase another
item for my rapidly expanding toolkit. Once completed I confidently turn the
engine over to watch the sparkd fly - still no luck - only a few good sparks
and then I see nothing - ahhhh!
So, now I'm really stuck! I swap out my recently purchased (about 3 months)
coil for my spare - still no difference. I statically check the ballast
resistor which is of 1 kohm, and check the input wires to the distributer -
a clear 12.6 volts. So I'm at my witts end and I'm supposed to be meeting
with a bunch of friends tonight for a party in my honour (mind you, they are
used to my car fixes). Finally I put the rotor arm in and pull a spark plug,
resting it on a good earth and find that a spark is being produced - of about
the magnitude I would expect to find in the distributer. So where is all the
power going? My only thoughts are that the ballast resistor breaks down under
load, or the distributer is simply too old and worn to produce the correct
motion for the appropriate dwell (I'm not very knowledgeable about this).
Does anybody else have any suggestions - I'm not sure I can face my friends
at the train station!!!!
Any ideas are very welcome!!
Cheers,
Paul.
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