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Wedge TR8 woes...electric?

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RoseRoyce

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I am having some electrical problems with the Triumph, and I thought I would ask if you have ever seen or heard of a similar problem.

When I purchased it earlier this summer, I drove approx. 2000 miles without any problems. Then during a particularly warm spell on a week end drive the car started to backfire and sputtered to a stop. I checked all wires for a loose connection, and it appeared that the wire to the coil was not fully in. I pushed it in, and was able to start the car, and drove without problems for about 25 miles, and the same thing happened. Again I was able to get it going and went another 20 or so miles and it stopped again. this time there was no way to restart. CAA (AAA in the US) to the rescue, I brought the car to BritAuto, my British car mechanic. He checked it out, and ended up replacing the electronic ignition, and that seemed to do the trick.

Since then I have driven approx. 3000 miles without incident. This week while crossing a bridge in slow, bumper to bumper traffic,the car started backfiring and sputtering again, and my son in law who was driving struggled to get across the bridge, and pulled into a parking lot. We ended up bringing the car back to BritAuto in Lachine (CAA again!). When we arrived at the garage, and the car had had a chance to cool down, it was starting and running normally again ! The car is still at the garage, and the problem has not re manifested itself...so far every check appears to be normal

One of the symptoms when it is sputtering and missing, is that the revolution counter is fluctuating wildly, but the engine is not "reving" wildly.
 
Could be a bad coil. When it gets hot it breaks down. That's one WAG on my part. What triggers the iggy? Points or an interrupter of some sort? The symptom would be indicative of bad points if it were a "conventional" (points type) ignition.
 
I would guess the coil also, followed up by an exorism of the Dark Lord Lucas from your car
 
Hi, Bernie -

Sounds a lot like what happened with mine. In my case, everything (engine, lights, radio, etc.) went dead momentarily, then came back. Thought it was heat-related, too, as it was a hot day, and had just entered stop and go traffic. I went through most of the usual suspects, like coil, ballast resistor, etc., etc. Several people suggested a bad ground, and I discounted it. However, I checked all the connections and found that the car was indeed losing its ground. That may be what's going on with yours, and the fixes you've done may have been red herrings.

Pull the negative battery cable and clean the terminal, bolt and nut, and the area where it's bolted to the car, being sure to scrape any paint and rust away from that spot. Do the same both ends of the ground strap on the engine. (My car had been painted, and the ground there was not always good - normal vibration would break the connection sporadically.) Apply a film of dielectric grease on all the parts and reinstall.

Check the main power cable under the glove box - the black rectangular plug at the lower right hand side, up behind the carpet. Kinda hard to get to, but disconnect the terminals, clean them up, and apply grease on them, too.

Keep us posted.

Mickey
 
If the ignition system has an "ignitor" you are describing classic failure diagnosis when the tachometer starts bouncing around, i.e. higher than the engine is operating.

Usually when a coil fails from overheat the engine will start missing and slow to a stop. Then when cooled down will restart okay again(for a while, until it gets warmed up again).


My recommendations, is to assure that the ground circuit from battery to frame to engine are clean and tight. Swap in a good coil. Road test and if that doesn't do it, then the ignitor in the distributor.
 
If you still have a stock distributor, I'd say it is your ignition module. They act like that when they are on the way out. They are actually more expensive than a whole new stock or aftermarket distributor. Most people don't bother with them. They switch over to either an aftermarket igniter like a Pertronics, or swap out the dist all together for a Mallory. On one of my cars I have a Mallory Highfire box and coil with a Mallory Unilite dist. On another car, I have the stock dist but with a different trigger and a MSD ignition. The third car is still bone stock. If it ain't broke...
 
Todd in the building of my 6 I was planning to use the Hyfire along with my Unilte dizzy. With reading about it ,it says you run the stock coil with a secondary coil. Is this correct? I had canned that idea and was thinking MSD though I didn't really want to run the MSD unit.
 
For starters, I will admit that the ignition system is still a bit of a mystery to me. I just don't have a firm grasp on the way all of the components work. That being said, my TR8 race car has the big Mallory electronic distributor. I think it's called a Unilite. It is controlled by a Mallory Hifire ignition box, and gets it's spark from a Mallory Promaster coil. I am pretty sure that if the controller goes bad, you can switch the wires around and run it on just the distributor and coil. I had Woody install this system when I decided to switch to a racing class that allowed me to get rid of the stock dist and carb. Since it's been in the car, I no longer have the high RPM break up that I had with the stock distributor body, optical pickup and Mallory box. I don't think that they were the cause of the problem thou. I think that at high RPMs, the cam was walking and it was changing the timing. The new motor has a cam retainer so it can't move around at sustained high RPMs. It also has the added benefit of no more wiped out distributor drive gears.
 
So you "are" running The Hyfire with only 1 coil. I was going to run it with a Promaster e series. is that the one your running?
If that is the case you have help fix 1 of my current big question mark,thanks!!!! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif
 
yep. Only one coil and it's the promaster. The car with the MSD has a bosch coil. The coil is mounted on the inner fender behind the drivers headlight. The Mallory hifire box is mounted on the passenger floor.
 
Racecar??

Is it a Promaster e series or the big one?
 
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