Just thought I would chime in on concerning problems with the Lucas
ignition systems. My '79 Spitfire has the Lucas CEI system which had
been acting strangely for quite awhile. The symptoms were weak spark
and random no start or cutout conditions. I really noticed this after I
repainted the firewall and redid all the electrical connections in the
system. After all of that work I thought the system should be perfect.
Not so...
What I found was that there is NO separate ground wire on the ignition
"module" (cast box with GM HEI, condenser and diode inside). It seems
they relied on the ground from the mounting of the module. BAD idea. I
went to some great pains to make sure there was no bare metal to rust on
the firewall during repainting and I sure wasn't going to make a
potential rust spot (and a definite source of future ignition trouble)
by taking off the paint under the module feet. The ignition module was
also nicely repainted which didn't help.
What I did was to add a ground wiring inside the module. I used an
18AWG wire on a small ring terminal fastened to the mounting screw of
the condenser inside the module, ran it out through the hole for the
pickup connector, and then grounded this wire to the body's ground bolt
next to the battery.
Since I have done this, starting has been easier and high RPM
performance is much improved. No surprises there.
HTH!
Steve Eiche
'79 Spitfire
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