Amongst other things I've been busy with I managed to do a bit of tinkering on the Gold Coupe
Basically I started on the ignition side of things as right before I bought the car I could tell things were not all right with it as it was clearly running rough. Anyone who's had an A Series engined car though will instantly recall the juggling of choke and throttle dependant upon weather conditions and wind direction or anything else to getting their car started.
So first off let's see how many cylinders we're firing on? Hmmm after removing HT leads in turn I came up with the wonderful result of two cylinders! It was however apparent that HT voltage was going to all four leads though some was being lost along the leads from the various arcing points noted in the engine bay. I say engine bay but it resembles more a grubby tar pit it's filthy.
Dizzy cap and rotor arm were cleaned up a bit out of curiosity but I have always simply replaced these as they are relatively cheap and dead simple to do. I also got new HT leads while I was at it. I had to find out first which Dizzy was fitted as it wasn't the usual type but after first getting the wrong one that was sorted and we were now running on 4 cylinders regularly. Taking HT leads of one by one now had the same effect which ever lead you removed.
The engine was still pretty lumpy and while looking around it was clear that the inlet manifold was not good. There were 3 visible fractures in the manifold thanks to stresses induce from the adjacent Maniflow manifold flanges being different thickness to the inlet flanges. OK well I can change the manifold at sometime though I don't relish the task of removing the corroded studs so for the time being lets see if I can temporarily seal things with some silicone mastic applied by finger around the manifold and the fractures.
Hey presto a great improvement.
So I decided to run the car for a minute or so at differing revs. Sadly at 4000rpm I'm getting wispy blueish exhaust. Looking like piston rings are worn though I'm hoping it's lesser more easily fixed issues.
Now given that my intentions with regards this car are to first run it as a heap while I do the mods I'm doing on my Mk2 and then once I've done that I intend doing a proper job on this car including a total engine change (and I mean change the engine entirely, think modern fuel injection 16v circa 120+bhp) I'm simply looking for a quick fix to get by on for the moment. Hmmmm ultimate bodge it and hope approach lets get some oil treatment to thicken up the oil and see what that does.
Well a can of Wynn's Supercharge Oil treatment and we seem to be on the path of passing the visual emissions test. (fingers crossed) There's a few other things to be done yet before I pop it in for an MOT again but really it's just the CV joints to be looked at for the moment to just get it through. I'll tackle everything else later