On the way to MMW2015

[Willie_B]

Room to spare.

[Mudhen]

MiniDave - support crew member of the year!    :-\  4.gif

(actually, I know he was secretly praying you'd break down so he could try his tow setup on someone else's car first - I question that guys motives   ;D )

Good luck on the diagnosis!

Pat

[94touring]

That was awfully nice of him  4.gif.   Time to dig into the dizzy perhaps. 

[Willie_B]

The car started for about 10 seconds this morning. Long enought to pull it to the garage door then it died and would not restart. Went to a local british car place but they did not have any distributors that would fit, so ordered a new 59D with electronics from Seven with overnight delivery. My car has a MG Metro A+ engine. Car is in Daves garage at the moment with the soaked carpet out trying to dry out some. As luck would have it tonight is the local british car guys meeting so Dave and I will be headed that way later.

[MiniDave]

Pics of Willie B drying out.....

[94touring]

Was your old one electric or no?  Sounds like what I just went through.  Would start briefly the next day. 

[Willie_B]

The dist. that is acting up now is a 123. I drove 2 hours in pouring rain when I went to mini56 without any issues.

[94touring]

Oh that's right.  Interesting. 

[Jims5543]

Crazy that a 123 crapped the bed. I am curious what did it in?  Do you think it shorted out? I remember you put a dish or something over it to keep water from hitting it, I wonder if it got too hot? I also wonder if the cap cracked from getting wet when being hot.

Kudo's to Dave for making the drive to rescue a stranded member here.  Oh and I am jealous of the lift you have in the garage, the guy I bought my E30 from had one like that too, he had the garage floor recessed so it was flush with the floor.  Nice digs Dave.

Good luck Willie, I hope you get back on the road today.

[MiniDave]

Fed X said the part was on a truck for local delivery at 6:57 this AM, but they all they said about delivery is that it would happen before 8 pm, whatever that means!

So, I'm going to pick Brad up at his hotel in a bit and we'll spend the time getting the car arranged and put back together, so when the part gets here hopefully we can just toss the dist in, set the timing and off he goes.

[94touring]

Very good.  Yeah I'm curious what happened to the 123. 

[Jims5543]

I may have missed your posts about this. Is that little radiator an extra cooling radiator or an oil cooler?  It is obvious by your interior temp pics while driving it is not AC. ;D

[94touring]

Aux radiator cooler Jim. 

[Jims5543]

Aux radiator cooler Jim.

Ah yes, I just went back to his mods thread.

Great idea.

[MiniDave]

Well, not a happy ending, unfortunately......we spent the morning waiting for the part by getting the car all organized and ready to travel, but the part didn't get here until well after noon. We got it installed but could not seem to get it timed to where it would start.

Finally Brad decided discretion being the better part and all that and he HAD to be home by tomorrow night, so off to Uhaul we went, rented a truck and trailer and he's on his way home now. I'm sad that we didn't have time to puzzle it out but we just ran out of time...

Note to WillieB, I can't think of any reason why it would, but double check to make sure the timing chain didn't jump a tooth or anything.....

[94touring]

Well dang man.  I wish there was more time to fiddle with it.  Brad you definitely have a great story and have had one heck of an adventurous trip. 

[Jims5543]

Well that does indeed stink.

Odd, I imagine you tried desperate measures like re-indexing the dizzy until you could get a green light?  Did you spin the engine with the dizzy cap off to make sure it was functioning?

The crazy part is that it ran for a few minutes the day before.

I am really curious to hear what caused this.

[MiniDave]

It ran that morning......sort of. It was maybe hitting on 3 cylinders and didn't have enough power to move itself, and it ran for about 20 seconds, then died and would not restart....that was with the 123 dizzy.

The new electronic 54D4E doesn't have the light to set TDC so we "guestimated" where it should go, then cranked the engine with a timing light on the marks and tried to get it close enough to run. Even tho Brad could see the marks and it was clearly moving in the right direction we were not successful and simply ran out of time. It never hit once with the new dizzy, which was puzzling to me - seems like it should have at least backfired or something....but it was making plenty of fire - so it definitely was working.

The 123 dizzy made so little spark - I've seen hotter sparks from static electricity!

Once he gets it home and isn't pressed for time he'll get it sorted. I'll be interested to hear what finally makes it go.....

We did check everything else, valve adjustment, compression, fuel etc.....all were good.

[94touring]

So you had spark and fuel but wouldn't fire?  Maybe blew the head gasket. 

[MiniDave]

I suppose that's possible, but I didn't see any indication of it on the plugs and the compression was fine.....

[94touring]

Did you happen to try using starter fluid directly into the intake while cranking it?

[MiniDave]

No, we talked about it but simply ran out of time.....

Brad texted me from south of Nashville at 9 this am, so he's probably pretty close to home by now.

[Willie_B]

Long overnight rainy drive but made it home.

[94touring]

Glad you made it safe n sound.  Keep us posted on what fixes it.

[Willie_B]

I got spark, fuel and compression but it still won't run. I have chased down a few small issues but it still is not running. Thought I found the problem when I  had 13.4 at the battery but only 12.6 at the coil. Went back thru all the connections cleaning and re-seating. Even took the ignition switch apart to clean it. That got the voltage loss down to only .2 volts. The timing light flashes strange when using it, one or two good flashes then it stutter flashes a few times.

Just remembered I have a neighbor from the UK that is a mechanic. I will talk to him Friday for input.