1964 French "Sharks Tooth" 2000

[sdibbers]

That’s the worst ball joint to seize too! Glad your perseverance paid off.

As for ignition problems: I believe the 64 ‘should’ be ballasted. Easy way to check: turn engine by hand (or put in forth gear and push) with the distributor cap off. Make sure points are closed. Now turn on ignition and measure voltage across the spade terminals on the coil. If you see 12v or above it’s not ballasted. If you see around 9v it’s ballasted.

The ballast resister is hidden in the wiring loom behind the dash. They can go bad with age, often working intermittently when they do. Just to throw you off the scent! You can temporarily run a wire directly from the points to the negative terminal of the coil and try a to start the engine. If you see a decent spark chances are the resister has died. You can run it this way (especially if you don’t have a tacho fitted) but will need to use a 3 ohm coil as a 1.5 ohm coil will over heat this way.

On the carbs, a thorough clean with carb cleaner should help you. Maybe consider new float valves to be safe. As long as the floats are still sealed and the spindles and their bushes aren’t too worn you should be fine.

 

[harveyp6]

My knowledge of early cars is limited, but didn't they have a separate ballast unit next to the coil? I've certainly seen cars like that, but that could be because the original one in the loom had failed.

 

[roverp480]

The French specific requirements at the time included a lot of radio inference suppression, not seen on UK specification, that is why the steel shrouded spark plug caps and the steel cage round the distributer. I suspect this would not affect the ballast and would be the same as UK

 

[marc78]

Today we wanted to hear the engine run, and very determined.... Sadly we did not revive it YET.
Progress summary :
0. Coil voltage check informs us it is a 12V, no ballast, one worry less I'd say.
1. Now that it can be steered it is so much nicer to work in the sun, so pulled it out with sibling serie 2A from 1968, gave it a body steam clean and started cleaning the carburetor
2. What the hell is this carburetor?!! We are used to Zenith and this SU is a completely different world. I hope we put it back correctly, I am still wondering how and when is the piston going up & down.
3. Home made paper gasket, should be fine to start
4. It does not start alas
5. Clean fuel throughout we have, sparks we have but it does not start
6. Many attempts later, one can hear it wants to fire but does not
7. With the air box removed it's easy to see smoke getting out from the air intake when we stop trying to start the engine....
8. Where are we now? Suspicion of exhaust valve(s) not actuating properly
So as conclusion of the day, next tasks will be : check compressions, check valves movement and tappet clearance
Any ideas and suggestions highly welcome!
Marc