Morris Minor Owners Club

Old thread yes, 15 years old ! Wonder what happened to rayoflemington, cam, bigginger etc. Don’t hear a thing from them now. Well actually, cam was here not that long ago. If that interested, you could search for the last post of the member or time last active - rayoflemington was last active Jan 0...

unless the spark plug leads have been mixed up somehow.

Highly unlikely?

Looking under the bonnet (for stray sparking) while running the engine in complete darkness, can be quite revealing.

My tip is not to let the battery get discharged too much and most certainly don’t leave it like that. Lead acid batteries soon fail, if not kept fully charged, by the plates becoming ‘sulphated’. Starting these older engines can be a bit of an ‘art’. Assuming one set of conditions fits all is not li...

Not for the faint hearted, but it is any spark, in the vicinity, which will ignite petrol vapour, not normal manifold and exhaust. Needs to be almost incandescent? I know because my engine was drenched in petrol at a little over a hundred miles an hour - a long time ago (July or August 1976). Switch...

If it is that, one would expect the fuel pump to be ticking away furiously?

Same as kennatt, but using the timing light to retard the engine by a small amount when pinking starts, and to know precisely where the timing is to be set on the next occurrence for the need of setting the timing.

A long shot might be crank end-thrust if only when going up hill. The only experience I have of this was with my ex BiL and his Triumph PI (which were apparently prone to this defect). He scrapped his nice (cheap) car because of it - it got so bad that engaging the clutch became an issue. That was a...

One of the problems is understanding the real signs observed by the driver and relayed, to us, as symptoms. Unfortunately, most are unconfirmed symptoms. ‘Accelerating’, to me, means a change in velocity, often (but not always) an increase - whilst ‘under labour’ can mean no acceleration or even a n...

Have a look under the bonnet, with the engine running, in the dark. A good check to see if sparks are going somewhere they should not be.

Confused now

Or still confused?

Could yet just be a faulty ignition switch. Do you hang a huge bunch of keys, or heavy fob, on it, along with the ignition key? It would not be the first time....

I note that the ballast resistor is shown wrongly wired, too. If M stands for motor, there woulld be a huge current through that coil (or more honestly virtually nothing through the starter motor (assuming the points were closed when initiating a start)🙂. Condensers are not polarity conscious, eithe...

It is more likely the coil than the condenser. What colour was the spark when the problem arose?

I have read that: " Larger batteries of the same type and voltage hold more energy, measured in Watt-hours, which is simply their rated Amp-hours times their voltage. So they take longer to charge at the same voltage and amperage." Of course that is true, but once charged that disparity is gone - t...

Geoberni, Please don’t try to move the goalposts. Just consider what he said. He said ‘a larger bucket takes longer to fill than a smaller bucket’ in the context of replenishment of lost charge in a battery. I maintain that with same rate of filling the times will be identical. Immaterial of whether...

A larger capacity battery is like a bucket of water, the bigger the bucket the longer it will take to fill. Really? If I have two buckets and pour out one gallon from each, you are trying to tell me that it would take longer to re-fill the larger bucket? Try again, but please don’t try to bovine ex...

Plus you have now fitted a heavy duty battery which will take longer to charge. Perhaps you could explain/expand on this, please? ‘Cos I disagree - unless discharged to a degree of capacity more than the lighter duty battery! I, too, lost a posting yesterday morning (turned off computer too quickly...

I find no problems with a securely sealed plastic container (can’t lose too much without the pressure increasing) but vented containers can definitely be a problem - especially if the fuel gets quite warm!

Did changing the points make any difference as I cannot imagine any scenario where this could be the case, if the gap is correct? They are, after all, only a simple switch in a DC circuit. Small bubbles of light alkanes will form in fresh petrol under the slightest reduction in pressure and will unl...

Dwell angle, at cranking speeds should make very little, if any difference to starting. I would be checking the plugs to see if they are over-wet or dry and go from there. What voltage at the coil when cranking? Is the starter motor suspect. Lots of things to consider, even down to battery and earth...