Dear Dstieber,
I'm printing your message and putting in with my service manuals.
"Never ascribe to Malice that which can be explained by Ignorance."
John J. Peloquin, Assistant Research Entomologist
Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521
On Fri, 25 Jun 1999 dstieber@paccar.com wrote:
> All of this talk about MGs not starting makes me remember an event that has
> lead me down the road of how to trouble shoot affectively.
>
> I had my 70 MGB for about a month and was screaming around a corner at free
> way speeds when the engine just died. I coasted to a stop and popped the
> hood. This was the early days (I was only 17) and was too dumb to have any
> tools with me. I was dumbfounded.....luckily the owner of a local MG shop
> happened to drive by in hig BGT and he pulled over. I had litterally only
> been looking at th engine for 5 minutes! He recognised me and the car
> (metallic maroon with glitter in it and a 1 inch clear coat....the car not
> me) from buying parts off of him recently.
>
> Anyway he jumped out said 'hi' and asked what happened. I told him it just
> quit. He pulled out a flat screwdriver, turned on the ignition, checked
> the gas gage, hit the starter, listened to it. Left the ignition 'on'
> looked under the hood. He undid the fuel supply at the carb (verified fuel
> present and under pressure). Went around to the other side popped a plug
> wire, used the screw driver to jump the starter relay contacts and checked
> for spark. He then popped the distributer and jumped the starter relay
> again. Saw that the points had collapsed, eyballed an air gap, handed me a
> business card and said I can use this instead of a feeler gage if I need to
> reset the gap again, and to give the car a tune up when I get the chance
> (the points were ugly looking!!). He than jumped the starter again and it
> roared to life, and he said "later", and he took off.
>
> Total elapsed time to check the fuel quantity, fuel pressure, fuel at carb,
> compression in the cylinders, spark at plug, spark at distributer, spark at
> points, and fix the problem and reassemble was under 2 minutes. This guy
> was amazing and still is in my opinion.
>
> I have strived my entire life to be that fluid and knowledgable in my
> trouble shooting attempts, but hey you take what you can get.
>
> Keep them running.
>
> Drew
>
> p.s. To anyone going to Mid Ohio this weekend. I will be driving my red
> truck with an MG logo on the trailer hole wearing a white "scowling street
> terrors" (Brit-iron mailing list for motorcycles) T shirt under a Hawaiin
> shirt on Saturday.
>
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