ROTOR ARM - PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED?

B

Barry Cox

New Member
Hi folks - appreciate probably most of you savvy P6's already know my forthcoming tip but thought I would relay the story for those who arn't.
This but this weekend the dear old girl let me down (the car not the girlfriend!).
Having gone to visit my folks with car running well on the way there - we got back in the car to go home - the car started fine but then just cut out. It was definitely not a "stall" but a definite cut out.
Now the reason I resurrected the dear old P6 was that old cars usually let you know when they are feeling sickly - I was getting fed up with our previous Rover 200 eating ignition units and leaving us stranded with absolutely no warning - so I was a little peeved with the P6 for apparently doing the same!!
Anyway the AA man was called and after the routine checks it turned out to be a hairline (and barely visible) crack in the less than one year old rotor arm.
A visit to the motor factors and £2.50 later had us back on the road.
So I consider myself lucky that it happened outside my folks place and atleast had somewhere warm to wait for the AA man and I now carry a spare rotor arm just incase.
I'm not sure if this is something that happens to the old P6's much but for a £2.50 spare it might be good insurance and you don't even have to carry any tools to fit it!
Cheers
Barry
 
Similar thing happened to me once, but mine was the dizzy cap centre electrode. Again not hard to keep a spare cap, rotor and probably some points in the boot. Just need screwdriver and feeler blades to fit the points.
 
I hate brakerless (pointless is a more apt term!) ignition systems. For the price of a new dizzy you can fit a mapable EDIS system. I have a contact who manufactures kits for the B series engine and has produced a couple of kits for the rover V8.

You just need to fit a trigger wheel to the front pulley and fit a throttle position sensor. You can then map the car from a laptop. I intend fitting EDIS to my V8 VERY quickly!

As an example of how good EDIS actually is, MartinW has this fitted to his MGBGT. now, the B series will typically start to run out of puff at around 5,500 rpm. Martins car with the EDIS system fitted will rev well over 7000 rpm as the map is more accurate than tweaking springs and bob weights.

As an extra benefit, you can switch back to conventional ignition in under a minute should you want to do so.
 
I made a system for my 2.2tc about 10 years ago, it also did injection too, but the ignition side was as you describe, trigger on the front pulley and throttle pot, fully mapped from laptop, allowed 2 diferent maps too with a dash switch to choose. (eco or power)

The great thing with these systems is that you can have the almost exactly the advance the engine requires, at any rpm and load, rather than the spring and vac advance system which is very vague in comparison.

The other benefit, depending on the system, is that you don't have a dizzy cap or rotor to deal with, you have a coil block which connects directly to the spark plugs, either with plug leads or even individual coils sat on top of the plugs. Some are more succesfull than other but generally they are considerably more reliable than a dizzy/points system.

Although it must be said that if you do get a fault, and you don't fully understand the system then your stuck !



Edited By webmaster on 1163438521
 
Had a Mazda 323 that died on us twice. Both times shorted rotor. So I put a spare in the glovebox after that. I always thought it might be a voltage problem.
Dick West
 
Don't tell a Renault / Fiat driver that the individual coil system is reliable. If you do drive home on 3 cylinders it ruins the catalyst

Why not put a new set of plugs points leads etc on your P6 and keep the working originals as spares ? If you have them , odds on you'll never need them
 
That's one of Sod's laws, as long as you've got a spare the original will never fail, but if you sell / give away / bin the spare the original will fail soon after !
 
Agreed! You want to see the boot of my MGBGT.
I have enough tools and spares to do a major job on the side of the road!
I mean who carrys a torque wrench and a trolley jack in their car! lol.
 
I had the metal contact of the rotor arm seperate from the bakelite body on our 2000, which then moved outwards & cut into the cap contacts as it was spinning. Luckily I had a spare Rotor but she still ran a bit sick 'til I got another cap on her. :)
 
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