As apparant from the attached previous post, my car was miserably out of
tune. Finished the tune up (exclusive of carbs) and have 25 or 30 miles on
it. It is running nicely, but I don't notice any big difference. Biggest
differences are that the valves are noisier and that when I advanced the
spark from four degrees to eight, it showed more oomph, but I think it is
pinging a bit - hard to tell with all the normal noises. It's still
overheating at idle.
Next step is to go after the carbs, which are oozing gas and very
probably running rich.
Best result of all this effort is that I feel like I know much better
what is going on with the car.
John Cowan
Previous post:
After putting putting six hundred miles on my revived TR-3A and doing a
lot of weekend restoration, I had regained enough presence of mind (after
two decades not working on cars) to realize it needed a tune up. Both
mechanics who worked on the car overlooked this issue.
When I checked into the situation, I found:
1. Potentially dangerously and mismatched spark plugs installed by first
mechanic (three BP6ES and one B6ES) (see Nick's post, appended below).
2. Plugs little more than finger tight and the nipples on top were loose.
3. Valve clearances between .004 and .0095 inches (left over from the car's
first incarnation 30 years ago).
4. Points set at .009 rather than .015 inches (second mechanic didn't check
this after replacing vacuum advance on distributor).
I've had a serious overheating problem when the car is idling. Perhaps
some of these screw ups are partially responsible.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Visit - In Their Own Words Website - an on-line non-commercial publishing
experiment, plus articles, article outlines and Left/Progressive links at:
http://sj.znet.com/~jfcowan/
|