[Healeys] Was no spark...boring story, happy ending

Tom Felts tomfelts at windstream.net
Sat Jun 10 05:54:20 MDT 2017


you just confused the heck out of me:):)  I've never understood timing and now I'm even more confused.:)  Glad you found the problem.


---- Stephen Hutchings <s.hutchings at rogers.com> wrote: 

=============
Last week I told you about how, after my adventures in static timing, I had no spark.I'm pleased to say that the car is now running, but it goes to show you that you can still get something fundamentally wrong after working on the same car, with the same techniques after forty years.
While trying out Mike Salter's method for checking the static timing, I thought I'd re-wire the cap and move the distributor around so that it would be oriented the way I see most BJ8's set up- with the vacuum advance between the oil filter and the block. When I put everything back together, it wouldn't start and I seemed to have no spark.This is where I began to make mistakes...Rich Chrysler used to say to me "don't over think these things, Steve!"
Guess I'm still over thinking. I made myself an acetate template of the distributor cap points so that I could see exactly which point the rotor was approaching, because I knew by now that I had a timing problem. This was my second mistake. The point that was about to fire was not the one I thought was about to fire, so I spent some wasted time getting it out by one point...with the width of the rotor point, it was a little confusing.Anyway, I'm back to my old configuration, firing on all six, and feeling slightly stupid.
I could have kept this all to myself, but who knows, it may help some other befuddled home mechanic who gets too close to the problem.
Thanks for all your suggestions
Stephen, BJ8


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