Hello All
Many thanks to all of you who responded to my problem with starting my TR4.
I finally had a chance to drive it to work today. The verdict ....(drum
rolls)... the problem was in the distributor.
First I checked the operation of the choke and it seemed fine, then I tried
some Quick Start and it did not start so I assumed the problem was ignition.
I pulled each plug to check them for spark and it was VERY weak; I had to
hold plug wires 1\4" away from the block and get really close just to see
the faint spark.
I had originally set the point gap to 0.015" and it would not start so we
took all the points wires off ( everything seemed OK) and took the points
out to look closer at them. When we re-installed them we set the gap to
about 0.08 (!) and the car started right up! Then we hooked up the dwell
meter, fine tuned the point gap (turned out to be about 0.016") and played
with the timing untill we got excellent throttle response.
Now time for a question: the distributor shaft seems very square to me.
Shouldn't the points ride right on the shaft or should they only get pushed
out on the high points of the lobes?
Last night the car idle OK. Today it runs very strong above ~1800 RPM but
idles poorly. When I had cleaned out the dampers I drained the oil out of
one and not the other one; I replaced the oil with 30W oil (as per
Bentley). Now they dampen the air valve noticeably differently. Could this
cause unusual things to happen at low RPM? It seems logical to me. BTW I
cleaned them one out at a time with a soft cloth soaked with gasoline. Does
this idle problem typically stem from carbs? Do they simply need to be
"tuned"? If so any bits of guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Once again, many thanks for the valuable advise. I may not have needed every
bit of it but I learned something new with each message
Mark Dalmaijer
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
1964 TR4 SU carbs
" If your LBC does not leak antifreeze and/or gear oil and/or engine oil it
must be a kit car"
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