Well. not me but the Black Pig......the Jowett !
Not a major problem 'cos it was just about 8ft in front of it's sty.
I'd backed it out to do some work on the garage. It was reluctant to start...a bit sluggish, so I put a spare battery on the floor in the back and stuck the jump leads on. It fired straight away. I'll put the trickle charger on when I put it away. Thought I.
Did all me jobs, including putting up an 8ft long shelf just above head height to hold all the 5 litre cans of oils and fluids out of the way, but accessible.
Tried to start up the car but it just spinned over like it had a pair...but no attempt to fire.
Spent the next hour fiddling about with things. Fuel ok, pump ticking. Easy Start didn't do anything. Flicking the points gave no spark at the king lead. Checked all the circuits...all seemed ok. Got my spare coil out, wired it up...nowt ! Bums !
I'd had enough and wanted to put it away til tomorrow. Too heavy to push up very slight slope even with 5' 1" of SWM helping. Trouble is, there's no flat bit at the arris end to get your back against.
Back to the front and more investigation revealed the coil wire broken in the dizzy.
Brand new MGB dizzy....only done 6 miles on it. So, I pulled a couple of inches through from the coil and Scotchlokked it to the condensor wire Clever or what ?
Started immediately and I put it to bed and locked up. Tomorrow, I'll take the dizzy off and do a proper soldered job on the bench using a better grade of cable.
I have no idea why it broke, it was by no means tight or trapped anywhere. Just glad it went where it did and not out on the road. . . you coulg'nt do all that on a modern !
Nice to bring the old skills back into use, though.
Ted
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If only they were that simple these days, the only dizzy breakdown I had was a hired MK2 Cortina. The moving contact of the points snapped off at about lots of mph in lane two of a busy dual carriageway. Instant engine cut out, interesting problem. :-)
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I've been to a fair few distributor-related breakdowns, as I'm sure has Ted.
Hairline cracks in the cap or rotor arm, worn heel on the points, lots of connection problems with the HT leads.
Sometimes the failure was simple enough, such as one of the spring clips mysteriously undoing itself or vanishing altogether.
More rarely the failure was terminal, such as a snapped drive from the camshaft.
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The distributor, what a heath robinson device, A sane man would never have invented it.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 12 Feb 11 at 17:05
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I think it is fair to say modern coil packs are a lot more reliable than dizzys depending on the car!
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But dizzies still need coils oh rATTs
and modern coil packs are NOT reliable
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I have never had a dizzy or coil pack problem on one of my diesels.
Cue common rail doom merchants. :-)
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>> I have never had a dizzy or coil pack problem on one of my diesels.
I've had a coil problem on and old Peugeot diesel - the one in the cut-off valve went open circuit.
stopped it stop dead.
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>> I've had a coil problem on and old Peugeot diesel - the one in the
>> cut-off valve went open circuit.
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>> stopped it stop dead.
>>
Thats a real diesel not one of these new fangled electronic ones. :-)
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the real definition is a solenoid even if it is a coil of wire round a plunger :-)
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But old Megane/Scenic coils make a realistic looking little handgun to threaten other drivers with !
Ted
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Apart from Renaults and my dads old Escort we have had plenty of cars near 100k with the original coil. The Fiesta is on 91k and the coil pack has never been touched since 1996 when the car was made. Still works perfectly.
I just think it is far easier to let a computer chip set the exact timing of the spark rather than the dizzy which have all the problems of wear any mechanical parts have.
Of modification I intend to do to my Haynes engine is to make an electronic ignition using a 555 timer IC for it.
My experience is they do go wrong a lot less than dizzys but when they do go wrong you have to buy a new one, which costs £100 where as a dizzy you can probably fix for free.
I remember on the Ladas adjusting the points on the dizzy seemed to be a yearly thing.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Sat 12 Feb 11 at 17:22
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Then put it in the Panda! and experience real"performance"!! ;-)
Last edited by: devonite on Sat 12 Feb 11 at 17:26
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i was talking real cars raTTs not iron horses
nothing wrong with a dizzy especially if you live in a jungle and the only means of communication is via some drums as its mechanical and you can cobble something out of an old monkey bone
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Too true, BB. I bet Ratto's coil packs aren't still doing what they're paid to do when they are 59 yrs old like mine !
Ted
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The first Skoda I had was impeccable, 30,000 mile 1200 swing-axle with oil cooler, dirt cheap though even for a Skoda because of the very simple distributor fault: a misrouted condenser wire touching the end of the contact breaker causing a sporadic short.
Brilliant car but a bit low-geared. Lovely trundling down French A roads at 60ish making a mellow boom and doing 50mpg.
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I loved 'em. Swing the back panel to one side, undo a few bolts, pipes and cables and pull the engine out on a trolley jack..
Fit a new clutch and wheel it back in....simples.
Ted
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Done it at least three times, once out of doors... Most underrated European cheap car ever I would think. I knew you were a man of taste and discernment Ted.
Not like some we could mention who will come scoffing and snorting round the corner in a minute.
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every skoda i had i loved
they had a air cushion feel to the ride and were a joy until you hit a sharp chicane and remembered it was rear engine rear drive and lets slow down a bit girl
always laughed when i let the punters try and find the boot catch
i ran a felicia for a few months last year cavernous inside (estate) economical utterly reliable and that lovely squishy skoda drive on air feel
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yeah modern cars are so boring, they always start first time.
remember breaking down in a jowett 43 years ago coming home from a car meet in harrogate. and some kind soul towed us what could have been a hundred miles back home. golden days
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I thought the Skoda 130 my daughter had was brilliant, in design. Sadly it was let down by materials and assembly. If it could go wrong, it would!
It finally drove off with unbelievable negative camber on the rear wheels that was wearing out the back tyres every couple of thousand miles. That was a semi-trailing arm model!
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Yes, the 130 rear suspension was more comfortable and less liable to lift-off oversteer, and the 5 speed gearbox was a great improvement. But the stub axles in the semi-trailing rear end were very short and the bearings could become noisy. They lasted longer in some examples than others. The swing axle arrangement by contrast was very strong and reassuring provided the driver kept the foot firmly planted on the throttle in the right gear during rapid cornering. Not a car for the modern mimser type.
I have to agree that the Estelle had a lot of quality and minor component weaknesses and needed to be kept on top of mechanically more than most cars. But it was highly individual, for the most part easy to work on and keep in proper tune, thoroughly entertaining to drive, economical and contrary to its reputation capable of being poled along surprisingly rapidly.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sat 12 Feb 11 at 23:49
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But Ted's Javelin is more desirable.
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I was in the old Jowett factory today or where it was to be more precise it went from a car factory to a tractor factory to be demolished and reincarnated as supermarket some interesting photos inside
One thing to come out of the demise of Jowett was the seeds of JCT 600.
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>> One thing to come out of the demise of Jowett was the seeds of JCT
>> 600.
Remember JCT 600 taking over the former Rhodes Garage where the A65 crosses Green Lane between Rawdon & Yeadon.
Can you explain the Jowett link?
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When Jowett closed down Jack Christopher Tordoff,s father bought a Garage on Sticker lane Bradford with the redundancie money he received from Jowett. Jack worked for his father in the garage but didn,t like getting his hands dirty mending cars so he started selling a few cars from the premises and it grew and grew and the rest is history, as a matter of interest the garage is no longer there but land is used by JCT for selling Chevrolets.I grow up with Jack he is a little older than me but what nice man and also a very shrewd business man.
Last edited by: Collos on Sun 13 Feb 11 at 17:01
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Broke down today. - Old Navy
