Recently and, very inappropriately, my `65 TR4A cut out on the San Fran
cisco Bay Bridge. After being pushed to safety, I immediately determined
that it was not fuel-related (gas was being delivered to the
carburetors. The points looked reasonable, and substituting a Lucas
condenser fail ed to start the beast. Somewhat whimsically, I
substituted the rotor a nd the car fired right up. Later - with the
shrewd detective work perform ed by legendary TR3 race car driver - it
seemed plausible that the act of changing the rotor may have corrected
the problem by rephasing the r rotor relative to the spark contacts and
that several ignition problems h ad overlapped and interacted: the timing
chain, overdue for replacement, may have put the rotor out of phase in
the first place, plus the distri butor baseplate was warped relative to
the shaft, making a completely ac curate setting of the points difficult.
These problems were corrected. A functioning spare coil was substituted.
New spark plug leads, Lucas po ints, condenser and rotor were installed.
The car would not fire and no juice was getting to the plugs. When -
again with a certain amount of w whimsy - the rotor was replaced with an
old, roachy Lucas rotor - it fire d up. Fired up as well, Hardy took the
original rotor and performed exp loratory surgery on it (ie - drilled it)
to discover that the center con ductive tongue was internally shorting
out on the metal spring which ho holds the rotor to the shaft. A query
to the list - has anyone had simila rly rare experience with a Lucas
rotor?
Peter
TR4A
San Francisco, CA
email: Gessner@tlcs.com
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