based purely on your cross section of puch engine, i would consider that in the catergory of extremely bloody good cylinder head design, for its age. (not surprising really as motorcycles seemed to be years ahead of production cars) lack of vac advance isnt significant with regards to max centrifugal advance vs performance (because there is hardly any vacuum with your foot buried at higher rpm)
i doubt it would ping with such low CR, plus it usually happens above peak torque where you cant hear it so well. but that much advance will have the effect of stopping the engine revving up so fast and killing power at high rpms. it goes without saying your base line idle advance setting is added onto total centrifugal, i wasnt paying attention but noticed you measured it at 15 idle, when it should be 4deg30mins, so that would bring it back nearer 30 if was adjusted, which is less alarming.
Wonder if they're using it almost as a crude rev limiter maybe? Just keeping in mind that even as it stands it's entirely possible to zip surprisingly easily north of 70mph, by which point you're definitely going to be at or above the 5000rpm max continuous duty speed set out in the manual.
Bit more power at the top end though wouldn't go amiss for maintaining speed on hills, though as I've said before she hussles along a lot better than most people (myself included) expect.
If I can ever get the distributor to move I might have a play with the timing to see what effect it has...not really expecting to get far though as the distributor housing welding itself into the crankcase seems to be pretty much a standard feature of these engines.
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As I've mentioned before something which had been bothering me on the Caddy for a while was that something in the vicinity of the aux belt was quite noisy. The belt while only a year old was also looking quite tired, with a lot of scuffing on the outer surface.
It actually looked quite a bit worse in person than the photo makes it look.
My main suspect was the tensioner, both because the pulley looked really badly rust pitted and because it seemed to get red hot when the engine was running.
There's also a very distinct groove worn where the belt runs. I'm pretty certain it was sitting cock eyed too and that's not just a trick of the camera. I could never quite decide looking at it in person.
A new tensioner assembly, idler pulley (I figured if you're pulling things apart and taking the belt off it just made sense to do both) and belt weren't expensive, and were available within an hour from my usual motor factor.
I did take a look at fitting it myself, but with how limited access is I could see it being the sort of job I'd run out of patience with in a hurry. Especially given how stupidly strong the spring is. So that was farmed out to a local garage that was recommended by a friend.
That was fitted earlier today, and that area looks a good deal more respectable now.
It's made things much quieter...I hadn't realised there was a distinct rattle coming from that area as well as the whiney hiss of an unhappy bearing. I forgot to grab the box from behind the passenger seat to actually take a look at the old parts to see how knackered they were, that'll have to wait until tomorrow.
This did present me with a slight logistical challenge though as my intended lift to get back from the garage became unavailable at quite short notice, and it's a place that's just a random industrial warehouse in the middle of a farm, so not exactly well connected to public transport.
Helpfully a friend had a car in there that was ready to pick up having just had some work done, and they suggested I just swap them over and we could figure out the automotive Tetris to get everyone and every car back in the right driveways at our leisure afterwards.
Some of you who've been reading my waffling for a while may remember this one.
It's the rules that you're not allowed to show a photo of this car without the interior too...
That dash is utterly bonkers but actually works really well in practice.
Despite being really rough in a few areas, I absolutely love this thing. It's that perfect blend of having a lovely wafty comfy ride and nice squidgy seats, yet somehow the moment you present it with a corner just seems to dig in and grip like hell. Really has a surprising turn of pace too if you call for it - even despite this one having lost the original twin carb setup during its long hibernation prior to being resurrected a couple of years ago.
This Lancia visited me a year or so back to try to address a running issue and to replace all the instrument panel illumination bulbs as only about 20% of them were working.
The illumination issue was easily sorted, but I never did fully get to the bottom of the running issue, which I had assumed to be carb related. I did get it running *better* but not right.
Turns out I had been a complete and utter idiot in fixating on the carb. For no particularly good reason my brain had just decided that someone must already have been through the ignition system, but the carb was known to have relatively recently been dragged out of a long hibernation in a box in a garage...yes, you guessed it...we had an ignition problem.
This was mostly fixed by someone working on the car after me. I noticed pretty much as soon as I set off from the garage today though that it still wasn't quite right. It would pull like a train if you gave it a decent press of the throttle, but was really lumpy on light throttle and was obviously still missing erratically at idle. Nevertheless, it was more than driveable...and I was quite enjoying wafting about for about an hour.
Right up until about 30 seconds away from home, at which point things went all Lancia.
The engine cut out. No stuttering, just off as though I'd turned the key. Conveniently I was heading downhill at the time so just rolled the last 30 seconds or so and slotted into the driveway under gravity.
My hunch based on how it felt was that we had lost spark. A quick check confirmed this hypothesis as correct. Absolutely nothing. The question of course then became *why* there wasn't any spark. Didn't take long for me to find a prime suspect as touching the ignition coil resulted in me just about losing my fingerprints as it was absolutely roasting hot (I hadn't left it sitting with the ignition on or anything). Time to grab a meter and see what it could tell us about the condition of the coil.
While it varies depending on the exact setup, as a rule the vast majority of 12V ignition coils will have a primary winding resistance of less than 5 ohms. For a basic go/no go test the exact number isn't important...just a number in that sort of ballpark.
Our suspect coil here had a primary resistance of 95K ohms...as in 95,000. That's rather a lot more than 5. Pretty conclusively dead.
It's no big secret that my garage is full of junk. As such I was pretty sure I still had a spare coil floating around from back from when I did the fuel injection conversion on the Lada (I mean, who doesn't?). Question was whether it would still be where I thought it was after three or four years...
Drumroll...
Yay!
No idea precisely how closely matched to the original it is, but they're both from cars with hall effect and amplifier based systems so should be close enough for testing purposes anyway. Given the shared Fiat DNA I'd be surprised if they're not pretty much a direct match anyway.
Cue a bit of improvisation to find a convenient bolt to secure it to (the secondary winding grounds through the case so that's important) for testing.
This had indeed restored spark, albeit not a very strong one. The car did now run, but very roughly. What was getting to the plugs seemed far worse than what we had from the coil though...so a bit more investigation was needed.
Few things were found to be an issue right off the bat.
Firstly, the distributor cap terminals aren't the right type for these HT leads.
Secondly there's clearly damage to one of the wiper contacts in the connector to the distributor pickup.
This doesn't actually seem to be affecting it, but if I can lay my hands on the bag of random scavenged connectors and wiring "misc" in the garage I'll replace this. While it's working now that sort of thing is just asking to be a liability longer term. Especially as it no longer securely clips together in addition to the damaged contact.
I very nearly wasted a lot of time then...but just caught myself and told myself to check the basics first...and actually pull the distributor cap off for a proper look. Just because it's nearly new doesn't mean it can't be faulty.
Anyone see something wrong with this picture?
Uuuh...
Well that won't be helping anything. There should be a spring loaded graphite contact post in the middle there, like the one in the original cap which helpfully was in the boot still.
Comparing the two caps side by side shows the new one to be a hair taller than the original (though it's possible that is just in the external moulding), and the new rotor arm was a good 1mm shorter from the contact point to tip.
The old cap also has the correct terminals to receive this type of HT lead.
Swapping these back over resulted in the car running the best I've seen so far, but still not right. Especially at lower engine speeds the spark is still slightly intermittent, and just generally seems weaker than I would expect from this type of system. I did try running without the coil ballast resistor in circuit and that actually made it worse if anything.
My suspicion now lays pretty evenly between the ignition amplifier module or the actual pickup in the distributor. HT leads are near new, I've verified we have solid power to the coil etc, so it's not something that simple.
We're going to try to track down a spare ignition module. Even if it's not guilty in this case it's a good thing to have a spare of.
Looks to be a Bosch 0 227 130 014 if I'm reading it right from the photo. Will have a look in better light tomorrow.
If it's not that it doesn't leave much but the distributor itself...which will be a barrel of laughs to change I'm sure as access to it is absolutely horrible.
So looks like it will be staying on for slightly longer than I'd originally planned. Just makes sense to get the parts sent here so I can try swapping out the ignition module at least.
If that and sorting that dodgy looking connector don't sort it, it'll likely be time for someone else or a garage to get involved...but that's a last resort. This car bested me once, there's a certain degree of pride (or stubbornness!) involved in being determined not to be beaten by it twice. Will update on how we get on as and when it happens.
