A contingent of 13 Morgans gathered from the Portland and Seattle
areas (and a wickedly quick early Plus 8 from Vancouver BC) and
cruised to the Newport area of the Oregon coast (Newport was home to
the Orca Keiko for some time in his rehabilitation). Great roads,
terrific weather, fine company, nice wine, etc.
As we got closer to the coast I found my car ('67 Plus 4, 4 Seater)
sputtering and backfiring every so often. We noodled a bit and I
inspected and tugged on ignition wires in the hope of finding
something obvious but nothing came to light. It got continually worse
so I started fiddling with the timing and the vacuum advance thinking
it might be getting off a bit. It didn't act like a regular miss but
a random miss on random plugs.
As we drove toward town on Saturday I pulled over twice to see if I
could fiddle it a bit more. The second time I couldn't even start the
car and then discovered one of the ignition wires to the coil was
(now) clean off its slide-on connector. Thanks to a Swiss Army knife
the wire was stripped and wrapped on the tab long enough to get to a
NAPA parts store and get a new terminal. Unfortunately, all the
mistaken fiddling with the timing had left the car with no power but a
timing adjustment by ear in a shopping center parking lot sorted it
out.
Now the question: I know the wire was attached in the earlier
inspections (the car won't run without it) but my theory is, if it
only had a few strands attached, the impedance went up enough to cause
an intermittency which caused momentary dropout and therefore, the
sputters and backfires. Does that make sense or is there another
gremlin in this scenario?
"Why are all my problems today the result of my solutions yesterday"
--
"Entropy Happens!"
Michael D. Miles, PE Consulting Design Engineer
(503) 292-1234, FAX: (503) 292-1105
email: mdmiles@mdmpe.com
http://www.mdmpe.com/
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