Worked on the Spit today trying to find and fix the problem with a
friend. We started with cleaning and filing the Bosch plugs. The
car started fine and I took a for a drive to warm it up. It started
to miss fire about a block from the house. Limp the car home and
proceed to install a new set of Champion plugs. The car started right
up but idled at 2000rpm. Couldn't bring down the idle with the fast
and regular idle screw. Also, the car was making a funning noise, it
turned out to be a vaccum noise from the emission control (crank case
breather) valve.
The vaccum was so high it was difficult to remove the oil cap on
the valve cover. With the cap off the idle when down but all adjustments
seems to have no effact on the idel. Tried moving the car but the
engine just stalls and back fires, which also poped the emission control
valve off. The car finally stopped running and wouldn't start.
The engine would catch and then just died while trying to start it.
Decided to check the float level and the front bowl was empty, reset
float level and try to start the car, same thing happens. Check the
front bowl again, it's empty, check the rear bowl, also empty. Look
at fuel gauge, it shows empty.
When to the garage and grap gas container use for the lawmower that
had some fuel. Added a couple of liters of gas into the spit, cranked it
for about 5 seconds and the car started right up. Reconnected everything
and was able to adjust the idle and mixture. The car now purrs, and drives
better than it ever has.
So, the moral of this story is to leave well enought alone and not to
let the fuel level go below 1/4 tank on the Spitfire. The only
explanation for my troubles is bad gas. The car was running on "bottom
of the tank" gas while I was making the initial carb adjustment, and
I guess it didn't like it. I still don't know why the idle when up
so high and cause such a large vaccum in the valve cover. If anyone
has a good explanation, I would like to hear it.
I would like to thank Trevor, Michael, Atwell, Stu-Jo and Charlie for
their help. The info on the Lucas sports coil was also very useful.
The best advise I can give to anyone after this ordeal is to work on
your car with someone who has no emotional attachment to your car so
rational decision can be made. In my case I had a friend over to give
me a hand which help a lot.
Dave |\ | | |
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Dave Chu \/ \/ | /| | |
Dept. of Elec. & Comp. Eng. |/ | | |
Concordia University Voice:(514)848-3115 Fax:(514)848-2802
1455 de Maisonneuve W. H915 Email:dave@ece.concordia.ca
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8 http://www.ece.concordia.ca/~dave/addr.html
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