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Waking a sleeping beauty

trrdster2000

Luke Skywalker
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Waking a sleeping beauty.

We're moving so the sleeping beauty in the basement garage must be kissed. What it did was kick my butt for leaving it in the dark for 2 and a 1/2 years.
The car was running a little rough the last few times out, so I didn't expect a miracle . I have a Capacitive Discharge system and a Points and Condenser back up all in a black box, don't ask,,we played with a lot of stuff back in the early eighties.
I did give it new gas with a octane boaster, mixed with about a gallon of old with Stable added a couple of times. The brakes and clutch were worked at least once a month for the duration. New plugs, carb cleaner sprayed into the tubes that have groose jets a couple of times over the last month. Marvel Mystery Oil in each cylinder, maybe five times for the course of it's sleep and hand
pumped a good quart of gas into a cup at the carbs hose, getting rid of old gas in the tube and filter. Cranked on it until 50 pounds of oil pressure shows, now install plugs , a little starting fluid sprayed outside the carbs, pull choke and expect wonderful sound of the smooth TR6. NO, NIDA,ZILCH, you get the picture.
No spark at the points, no 12v at the coil, through the black box switch to points and got 12v on each side of the coil and spark at the points when opened with a screwdriver shorted across the gap. Now no spark at the plugs, did a coil test by holding the wire out of the distributor to block and opening the points with a screwdriver and a big 1/2 inch jump. Cleaned the top of the rotor button and made sure the carbon tip in the top of the distributor was clean and spring working, no spark to plugs. I grabbed the cap form the race engine, along with the rotor and changed out both as a unit. No SPARK AT THE PLUGS!! Changed just the rotor to the old one and there it was. No point in not pulling the plugs with all the cranking, I was sure they would be wet, that was affirmative.
A little starting fluid and away we go. What the heck was that all about, it's not like all these parts didn't work together on both engines and the only way to get them to work was to mix them up and they a different makes, Lucas and NAPA.
The caps look the same but rotors are completely different!!!!
Just what was going on inside that cap will be a puzzle, but you can bet I will be putting it all back as it was the first chance I get to see what happens. Oh, and yes the little ground wire was in good shape, it was not getting from the coil wire to the plug wire, just that simple or not as it turns out.

Wayne
 
Probably not your issue, but I had a lot of trouble with the Crane XR3000 CDI that I installed on my previous TR3A until I realized that the rotor was touching the pickup module as it turned. The engine would run OK sometimes, then other times run really rough or not at all. The rotor was just barely touching the pickup, not enough to cause any damage, but apparently the extra vibration was causing problems.

The other thing I would think about is 'phasing', the relationship of the rotor to the cap terminals when the ignition fires. Some rotors have a much larger tip (where the spark jumps to the post in the cap) than others. Perhaps your two caps and rotors were slightly different, causing the phasing to be off far enough to keep the spark from jumping the gap (or jumping to the wrong place). The Crane came with an adjustable mounting bracket but no clear method of adjusting the phasing (by moving the bracket) except to cut a hole in the cap and watch. I started out trying to make it the same as with the points (by adjusting the bracket to get the same ignition timing), but that didn't seem to work well. Never did understand why.
 
Probably not your issue, but I had a lot of trouble with the Crane XR3000 CDI that I installed on my previous TR3A until I realized that the rotor was touching the pickup module as it turned. The engine would run OK sometimes, then other times run really rough or not at all. The rotor was just barely touching the pickup, not enough to cause any damage, but apparently the extra vibration was causing problems.

Had a Crane in my TR6 when I purchased it and had the same problem. I have been surprised that nobody else has mentioned it.
 
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