Howdy, all.
I had previously written:
> My Elan just develped a miss tonight.... Aaaakkk! I'm gonna take it
> over to Clay Vyzralek tomorrow, and get a quick diagnosis.
As an update, my Elan has been at AVO (Clay's shop) for a couple weeks
now, mostly just sitting around, as I made numerous phone calls locating
some ignition parts. A quick compression check turned up no apparent
issues, and we believe that the engine miss is simply ignition related,
probably just a coil or igniter problem.
It appears that one of the two coils went wonky, but I also think it may
be possible that a bad igniter could have *caused* the coil to fail.
We'll probably have to narrow this down by swapping parts back and forth.
This car also has a gear reduction starter (of undetermined origin... it
doesn't appear to be one of AVO's, or JAE's, or DBE's). The starter has
been making unhealthy noises for a while, so Jeff at AVO agreed to look
at this too.
While investigating the funny starter noise, Jeff noticed not only that
there was no clutch dust cover on the engine, but that the upper starter
mounting bolt was missing.... I'm amazed that the pinion had not yet
jammed itself into the ring gear! The pinion looked OK on inspection,
but Clay expressed concern at this point about the real possibility of
damage to the ring gear.
Rats. Engine coming out, to install dust cover and inspect flywheel.
Clay meanwhile explained that the dust cover is necessary, because the
starter registers on the dust cover ID, and without it the pinion mesh
with the ring gear depends on how much slop there is in the starter
adapter plate bolt holes. According to Clay, the pinion mesh without
the dust cover in place is not really accurate enough for reliable long
term starter operation.
Does anyone here on the mailing lists have other opinions about the dust
cover? Is having the dust cover in place really critical, for adequate
starter alignment?
Having removed the engine, in preparation to install a dust cover, Clay
naturally had a look at the ring gear. Good thing, too. The ring gear
was utterly and completely grunged. Quoth Clay: "worst one I've seen
in many years".
Well, OK. The next thing to decide was whether to r/r the ring gear on
this (extremely light, Aluminum, with some sort of sintered metallic
coating on the friction surface) existing flywheel on the engine, or just
obtain another complete flywheel with a ring gear. I eventually opted
for the latter, based on the following thinking:
1) The flywheel on the car is so light that it seems to cause confusion
to the EFI computer at low revs. This causes a "hunting" idle that is
kinda irritating. I am very curious to see whether this problem will go
away, with a stock inertia (or closer to stock inertia) flywheel.
2) It would have been kinda expensive to r/r the ring gear, because of
how it is doweled in place on the flywheel. A specialized machining
operation would probably have been necessary.
3) Clay expressed doubt as to the long term reliability of this light
flywheel, on a car in which I plan to cover a lot of road miles. It
appears to be a PAECO (eeeeeek!) unit, and with a friction surface of
questionable longevity, etc, it doesn't seem very well suited to a road
driven car.
4) Clay informed me of a very nice T/C flywheel that is being imported
by JAE, from England. It is of all Steel construction, and at 12 lbs it
is in between stock and full race flywheel weights. It uses the normal
method of ring gear attachment... i.e. an interference fit. At $180 US
this unit is only about 1/3 the cost of a Tilton flywheel, only a few
pounds heavier, and it is probably nearly as well made.
I think I'm going to get the JAE flywheel, and set aside the very light
flywheel that came on the '65 for possible later use on my '64 Elan.
Hmmmm. Isn't it funny how "trivial" little problems can slowly grow into
significant dollar investments. ;-)
Erik "August car maintenance budget blown to hell" Berg
|