Hey There,

I have a Series 1 1/2 (Car:13000s) and I have a very pecuiler problem. The car will drive absoulty fine with no problems and then explicably start missing, then sometimes it will and sometimes it won't fix itself. Sometimes it will stall, sometimes not.

I have replaced the points, the condensor, the wires, the coil, the timing seems right on at idle, I have had the carburators professionally dialed in and the fuel pump is working (evidence of the gasoline stain on my wall 10 feet away...) I have swapped out the distributor from a running etype and the problem still existed.

There is one small thing that I found: the wire going from the coil to the distributor seems to have some loose connections. I'm going to replace the wire and see if it solves the problem, could that be it??

Does anyone have any ideas as to what else this could be? It's quite a doozy!

Evan

Submitted by DavidBarnes71@… on Mon, 05/12/2003 - 22:27

Might want to check the coil itself. Usually when they go it is all together dead but I have heard of them developing an open in the windings that will manifest itself when the coil gets warm. Might check the coil wire and the power and ground wires going to the coil. I had one car that devloped an open in the inside one of the wires going to the coil but the insulation was not broken. Found it by accident when moving that wire while the car was running but it gave me alot of intermittant trouble until then. Just for fun might want to check the end caps on all the fuses. I had intermittant trouble with the tach and unknowingly horns and fans going dead and later found the end loose from the glass but the fuse not blown. Probably a long shot on all of these but some things I have found in the past.

Submitted by mfrank@westnet.com on Mon, 05/12/2003 - 21:18

The answer is definitely to check all the electrics carefully. If reterminating all the frayed wires, loosening and retightening all connections, cleaning the grounds, etc doesn't work, here are a few things to check further:

- The points are worth looking at again. (One of the reasons I've gone with an Optilite) The points not only can pit, they can get an invisible coat of grime which increases resistance. Make sure the hot wire doesn't foul to ground.

- Check the condenser: unhook it from the primary circuit, and apply an ohm meter set to it's lowest range across the contacts...the ohm meter should momentarily swing towards zero ohms, then settle back to zero.

- The ignition switch. I had this problem last season. Every once in a while, the engine would simply die. I could turn the key, and it would tick right over again. Turned out to be a failing switch. Try hotwiring your switch, and see if the problem goes away (and don't forget to normalize the circuit after the test).

- Distributor cap. A little bit of carbon between the contacts will cause damaging arcing when you crank up the RPM's.

Mike Frank

Submitted by mcload@ev1.net on Mon, 05/12/2003 - 20:08

Sounds as though you've covered everything, and I agree w/Pascal. But since you're looking for wild guesses, here's one. Although you've replaced condenser and distributor, check to see if you can rotate the distributor by hand. The pinch bolt may not have been tightened down. However, the result would be a constant problem, not an intermittant one. But like I said it's a wild guess.

I recently found my distrubutor loose while trying to find out why it was missing. I had been blaming it on fuel mixture.

Patrick McLoad
1966 E-Type, Right-hand Drive Roadster
#1E1445, 2002 C5 National Champ

Submitted by pascal@jcna.com on Mon, 05/12/2003 - 13:02

Evan

go thru all the connection and clean them. coil, ignition switch, etc... being intermitent, that's the only explanation

Pascal Gademer
72 E-type 2+2
00 XKRCoupe
99 XJR