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Oily Ignition Problem

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62BT7

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So I was out driving yesterday and had my first post-rebuild unexplained system failures in my car. Setting: I'm driving along about 40mph and the car just sputters and dies. Luckily I'm heading downhill and am able to make a side street. I cut the ignition, turn the key again and it fires right up and idles well. It's possible there's some water in the gas from condensation that accumulated during the rebuild so I think maybe I just had a bad spurt of watery fuel, it sure felt like fuel starvation (btw, I plan to put some water absorber in the tank once I get the gas level down). But as I was driving home I hit a pretty sharp little bump and the car totally died. I did an "inflight restart" and once again it ran perfectly. A short? I checked all the easily accessed ignition connections when I got home, nothing seemed loose. Here's the question du jour: I popped off the distributor cap tonight(I'm replacing it with a NOS Lucas & bumblebee wires) and I noticed there was a drop of oil on the high tension post inside the cap, as well as oil residue on the rotor in a circular splatter pattern where the oil had been dripping on the rotor while rotating. Question: Could this have been the cause of the stall/cut out? It wasn't drenched, just a film of oil. Any ideas what's causing the oil droplet to form in such an odd place? Ideas?
-Tom
 
I ruined an autocross back in 1986 that I was sure to win, because I over-oiled the distributor the night before.

I had also installed a (cheap pos) fuel regulator that night, ahead of the 3 x 45DCOEs, and concentrated all my troubleshooting on it while at the event (it seemed like fuel starvation...).

It was when I got home and removed the distributor cap that I saw the couple little drops of oil had been slung throughout the workings.
 
Hello 62BT7, the oil is probably coming up the distributor drive and working it's way between the bushing (in the body of the distributor)and the shaft. I had the same thing with my BN7

Initially I had a new bushing and shaft installed but then added a regular lip seal. I machined a step in the body/(upper end of the) bushing under the plate that the advance weights pivot on.

The seal is a press fit in the body and seals on the shaft. That was about 14,000 miles ago and I've not seen any signs of oil.

I wish I could remember the p/n of the seal.

Hope this helps,

Best regards,

bundyrum.
 
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