You'd have thought with all the words I write on here I'd be imune from Saga's, wouldn't you? Wrong!
Lucky, my '70 S1 3500 has enjoyed his shake down running and I've put around 2,000mls on him to get all the faults and wrinkles at least identified. The principle of these was an engine running fault. Every so often the engine would just cut for a matter of a second or so, not enough to stop the engine even at idling, but enough to be worrying and provide a significant hesitation when accelerating. Aha! was my first reaction; the dreaded P6 fuel vapourisation. But it wasn't. It happened under completely random conditions including all those where fuel vapourisation shouldn't (and have you seen what the temperatures have been recently?). So I finished up with a ranking of probable causes and shipped him off to a rolling road organised by Colin Gould at Faringdon. My ranking was first, dying but not dead mechanical fuel pump, second peculiar ignition malady, such as drifting timing. So I provided Colin with a fuel pump overhaul kit and an electric pump as well for the fuel possibility. For the ignition, regular readers will know by now I don't approve of points ignition and the first line of any reply is fit electronic. So I bought off Ebay a complete new distributor of the basic type that SD1's had, but new manufactured with a supposedly updated and robut set of electronics. The theory was that Lucky has stood for a long time and done very low miles, so therefore I don't trust the centrifugal advance or the vacuum advance in the existing distributor.
Guess what the problem was? Capacitor in the process of failing! Another to add to the long list of dead capacitor stories.
The rolling road went to change the distributor for my new one and, Oh Dear, wrong drive on the new distributor. SD1's have a male spigot on the end of the oil pump drive, P6's, in common with all Buick and other GM ancestors, have a female, ie they need a Male drive spigot on the end of the distributor. After much tooing and froing the supplier accepted he couldn't provide a P6 compatible drive. Meanwhile I had ordered a Mallory Unilite, which being American and designed to suit the Buick's etc still around in the US do have the correct drive. But there are currently none in the country.
Now Lucky is destined to eventually receive the brand new 4.6 that I have sat in my garage, but I want to get some miles out of the 3.5 first - it's only done 42k. The 4.6 has a Mallory Twin Point in an SD1 front end (so not compatible with the 3.5 - I tried that!) which is reckoned to be the dog's b------ks of Rover V8 ignition systems when paired with a suitable ignition amplifier. so of course I have the ignition amp already in stock.
Final solution? Fit the ignition amp to Lucky's existing distributor complete with new points and capacitor (which we'd fitted it with anyway to get it off the rolling road!). So Lucky is now points maintenance free for the forseeable future, but by an entirely different route to that planned! And it only took about 3 1/2 minutes to fit!
Chris
PS That is far from the end of Lucky's Saga at Uncle Colin's, but you'll have to wait a week to hear about the rest!
Lucky, my '70 S1 3500 has enjoyed his shake down running and I've put around 2,000mls on him to get all the faults and wrinkles at least identified. The principle of these was an engine running fault. Every so often the engine would just cut for a matter of a second or so, not enough to stop the engine even at idling, but enough to be worrying and provide a significant hesitation when accelerating. Aha! was my first reaction; the dreaded P6 fuel vapourisation. But it wasn't. It happened under completely random conditions including all those where fuel vapourisation shouldn't (and have you seen what the temperatures have been recently?). So I finished up with a ranking of probable causes and shipped him off to a rolling road organised by Colin Gould at Faringdon. My ranking was first, dying but not dead mechanical fuel pump, second peculiar ignition malady, such as drifting timing. So I provided Colin with a fuel pump overhaul kit and an electric pump as well for the fuel possibility. For the ignition, regular readers will know by now I don't approve of points ignition and the first line of any reply is fit electronic. So I bought off Ebay a complete new distributor of the basic type that SD1's had, but new manufactured with a supposedly updated and robut set of electronics. The theory was that Lucky has stood for a long time and done very low miles, so therefore I don't trust the centrifugal advance or the vacuum advance in the existing distributor.
Guess what the problem was? Capacitor in the process of failing! Another to add to the long list of dead capacitor stories.
The rolling road went to change the distributor for my new one and, Oh Dear, wrong drive on the new distributor. SD1's have a male spigot on the end of the oil pump drive, P6's, in common with all Buick and other GM ancestors, have a female, ie they need a Male drive spigot on the end of the distributor. After much tooing and froing the supplier accepted he couldn't provide a P6 compatible drive. Meanwhile I had ordered a Mallory Unilite, which being American and designed to suit the Buick's etc still around in the US do have the correct drive. But there are currently none in the country.
Now Lucky is destined to eventually receive the brand new 4.6 that I have sat in my garage, but I want to get some miles out of the 3.5 first - it's only done 42k. The 4.6 has a Mallory Twin Point in an SD1 front end (so not compatible with the 3.5 - I tried that!) which is reckoned to be the dog's b------ks of Rover V8 ignition systems when paired with a suitable ignition amplifier. so of course I have the ignition amp already in stock.
Final solution? Fit the ignition amp to Lucky's existing distributor complete with new points and capacitor (which we'd fitted it with anyway to get it off the rolling road!). So Lucky is now points maintenance free for the forseeable future, but by an entirely different route to that planned! And it only took about 3 1/2 minutes to fit!
Chris
PS That is far from the end of Lucky's Saga at Uncle Colin's, but you'll have to wait a week to hear about the rest!
