Dean Paige wrote:
>
> Dean Paige wrote:
>
> Gessner wrote:
> >
> > 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
>
> Yes indeed, in my TR-6 on a particularly stormy night on Kanan Dune Road
> in the Malibu area. Ignition just plain shit down. Upon examination in
> the full light of the next day I determined that there was a microscopic
> crack in the rotor body parrallel to the dist. shaft. Spark was leaking
> through the crack and grounding on the shaft. It took replacing the rotor
> and car starting to encourage the close examination of the old rotor to
> determine what went wrong. The crack was extrodinarally difficult to see
> with the naked eye.
>
> Deano
If you care to see a real pretty sparkling light show, just go into YOUR
garage turn all the lights out, raise your hood and start your engine,
it's amazing all the sparks flying around under yopur hood.
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