Whew.
I've been spending the past couple of days chasing an idiot-light problem
in my Mom's Chevette. The Oil/Choke light stays on. I've verified that
it's not the Oil, and the Choke is being devilishly hard to fix.
Soon I hope to turf the light and put a full set of gauges in there, like
there should be.
Today's excercise was to remove the oil-pressure switch and install a tee
so that I can use a mechanical gauge (rather than trying to match senders
& gauges) - in order to get at the switch you gotta have reverse-bending
elbows and some strange looking tools. I should be able to remove TR3
radiators now :-)
Anyhow, 'pon starting it up ("to check for leaks"), I noticed a crackling
noise as the car ran. Bad. Turned off the motor and inspected engine
bay.
Turns out I'd forgotton to re-fasten the coil lead after removing it from
the distributor cap - had to do that to get my hand in. The engine ran
with the center lead disconnected COMPLETELY from the diz. cap, and about
3/4" of airspace (and rubber!) between the two contact points.
Wonder how hard it would be to modify the 'vette distributor into service
for the Triumph 4-cyl's? That's quite a lot of sparking muscle- and I've
never had one fail on me yet. My other Chevette ran quite well with a
very, very pitted cap & rotor.
The advances might be lousy for the big wet-liner four, but it might be a
good spitfire swap...?
-Malcolm
* There is a FAQ for this list! Its temporary home is:
http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/walker/triumph/trfaq.htm
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