Oh Dear... I got a problem :(

[Sp!ke]

I changed the plugs, dissy cap and rotor arm and.... it stilll didn't fire up. Nearly but not quite anyway.

So I took another closer look and noticed the plug caps had been put on the distributer cap the wrong way around. (it wasnt me because I marked each one before removing them).

I can only assume that the Green flag man put 1 & 2 on incorrectly last night after he had a look at the rotor.

Anyway, put them back the way they should be and All Sorted! She fired up perfectly and purred as per normal. :bannana:

One really big lesson to be learned... Professionals arent always what they claim to be!

1)The distributer cap and rotor were so old and knackered that I recon they had been on the car well over a year even though in that time I have had two major services and one minor. It looked to me like the last person that tried changing it gave up as one of the two screws holding it in was rounded off and could not be turned whatsoever. I had to cut the head off and once the cap was off, get the mole grips on what was left to remove it. tsh tsh

2) The green flag man might have actually managed to get me home last night had he not made such a simple slip-up. Less haste, more speed.

Now I have the car and bike at work so I gotto make an extra 50 mile trip to work and back to get both vehicles home again. Still, at least its sorted and was nothing major.

From now on, I will be doing all routine maintenance myself, leaving only that which I am unable to do for the so called pro's.

 

[Shude]

All Sorted!

Hurrah!

 

[Dieselman]

Top job Spike.

This is exactly why some of us do our own maintenance, a more reliable vehicle for less outlay. What you save on labour you can spend on parts.

Having read the thread the symptoms do sound like low spark voltage, I've seen symptoms very similar when a coil was on the way out.

A quick test is to pull an HT cap and check the size of spark, preferrably with a checking tool. After that try pouring a small amount of petrol down the inlet manifold and see if the engine fires.

As others have said OVP will cause symptoms like these.

 

[NormanB]

Sp!ke
Just found this thread!
So can I summarise as I cannot work out what the problem was?
1. Car lumpy and horrible.
2. Green Flag attended found nowt (but reversed 1 & 2 HT leads at dizzy).
3. Car will not start even using jump leads.
4. Sp!ke changes dizzy cap and rotor arm.
5. Car will not start.
6. HT lead problem identified and rectified.
7. Car now sweet.

Conclusion: Dizzy Cap/rotor arm were the original cause of lumpy horrible engine running.

BTW: After carrying out major work on my daughters car last year I was absolutely crestfallen when the car would not start. I repeated all the major checks to ensure I had reinstalled the camshaft belt (valve timing!) correctly - and could find nothing wrong. Called the RAC - he found (within 90 seconds) that I had put the HT leads on wrong - I was fu**ing gutted. (I had messed up the direction of rotation when working out what went where!!) .

 

[Sp!ke]

LOL, the funny thing is the cap on mine is actually marked with the plug number.

Your summary is about right, the original problem most likely being the cap/rotor, but I also changed the plugs after seeing how bad they were.

 

[sebastianforbes]

hi there

when i saw that leads 1 and 2 has been put on backwards i had to ask for some advice.

now, my car is running ok at the moment after i just broke down and the fault was found to be the rotor arm. the car runs just as it used to but what concerns me is that :

the furthest plug/lead runs along the right-hand side of the engine, the next furthest is just on the left of that, and so on until you get to the nearest lead which is on the complete left of the six leads. so you have six neat lines of leads. the middle four go to the nearest respective connections on the distributor.......

but the left-hand one crosses over to the right-hand side of the dizzy and the right-hand one crosses over to the left-hand side of the dizzy.

this looks awfully untidy, the snap-down cover will not go down on top properly (because of the overlapping leads) and i wonder whether it is possible that 2 cylinders could be incorrectly connected ? i have heard about 12 cylinder cars only firing on 11 cylinders !!

will i do damage to the car if i swop leads about ? will a six cylinder car only work if the 6 cylinders are firing in the correct order ?

many thanks in advance and sorry it took me so long to explain.

cheers

sebastian.