Once the wee beastie was back on the road I kind of expected it to be plain sailing…??unfortunately??due in part to bad luck and in part to my stupidity we had a few problems.
Most of the time my wife used the car just to putter around town… taking the kids to school, going to the local shops etc. and for this kind of work everything seemed OK. but on Saturdays my daughter plays in a musical group that is based in a town about 10 miles away.
We set off early so I could go slowly along the country lanes instead of having to drive at dual carriageway speeds, one thing I did notice having not driven a Mini for a while it was a bit noisy! ?? I have no idea who picked the gear ratios for this car but he needs shooting, so much gear changing when slow and so many rev's at anything??approaching??speed! ??it must be either a 3.7 or 4.1, if I ever pull the engine I'll put a 3.1 in thing! ??That aside it went OK on the way except for one slight miss-fire that I felt but the kids did not. ??
The way home however was different matter! ?? ??About half way back we got a bad miss-fire then the engine died…. ??the way it went felt like a fuel problem. ??I pulled over and got out with something heavy, a whack on the pump got us under way again! ?? I did this a further two times on the way home… each time I was lucky and found somewhere safe to pull over and hit the pump again. ??
Later that day I popped over to my lock-up and raided the pump off my wife's 850 Mini. ??With that fitted I ran it for a while and was happy that was a fixed problem. ??While I had the rear off the ground I also noticed a rear wheel bearing could do with replacement.. I'll do that at some stage but it's not a priority. ??While on this longer run I also resolved to to the clutch release bearing that makes a racket whenever the clutch is down, I have got a replacement and will fit it soon.
One thing you should know about me… I am NOT a purist… I don't believe in living with a crap bit of design if there is a??replacement??that can do the job better without ruining the character of the car I will do it! ?? So is the ignition on a Mini crap? YES! ??Points that need adjusting every few months, ignition leads that don't seal round the spark plugs or distributor cap all sited right behind the grill with no covering at all. ??Wet weather is not the Elves friend. ?? ?? ??Hiding away in the back of my garage I had a Lumenition Optronic Ignition and Lucas Sports coil. ?? Well after converting the car to Negative earth I fitted these, it sounded much nicer! ??(for a while) ??a day or two later I was warming the engine up when it coughed, spluttered and died… this time it was not fuel. ??I fiddled with it a little before restarting, it started fine again, then a few minutes later it died again. ??As my wife needed the car and seeing as the only thing I had done was fit the electronic ignition I swapped back to points and ran it again, it was fine.
I emailed Lumenition who emailed me a fault-finding guide. ??This said the failure I was seeing was a typical failure mode of the optical switch, it goes on to say the switch is not repairable! Ha, now that is a challenge! ?? ??After??judicious??use of wooden scrapers and acetone the circuit was revealed and the drawn out. ??A colleague and I rigged up a motor and chopper and soon had a nice steady display on the oscilloscope. ??We then heated it with a hot air gun to see if it failed, well it didn't until we got it hot enough that plastic started melting! ??we left it running all day with no problem and concluded that the optical switch was not the problem! ??(glad about that, a??replacement??is 70 quid!).
But what was it? ??I swapped back and forth a few times between points and electronic and problem only seemed to manifest itself with electronic…. so if it's not the electronic ignition failing what could it be? I reasoned that the only effect of the ignition is to give a more powerful spark, this could cause tracking! ??(where a spark either travels over or through bad insulation) ??I also??remembered??seeing an??article??a few years ago about rotor arms… ??swapped my nice shiny new arm for an old one from my bits box and Lo… no more problem! ??it turns out that modern arms have two problems, they have too much graphite in the??plastic??and the rivet that holds down the contact is too long. These two together meant the fatter spark from the new ignition could break down the insulation and track to the spring contact in the middle of the arm! ??Oh well, lesson learned.
I also took the liberty of replacing the 1/2 candle power fixed beam headlights with a set of Wipac Quadoptic Halogens I had… I can't the point of not being able to see!
I had two other problems, first a brief moment when all the??electrics??went out, this turned out to be a??corroded??fuse… there are only two, one does things when the ignition is off (lights flash, horn, interior light etc.) the other runs all the electrics with the ignition on, this was the one that failed. ?? The other was ignition switch failure, somehow I had lost the key for the car so I had been starting it by wiggling a worn key in the lock until it started, eventually the ignition lock had enough of this a gave up the ghost…. annoyingly though the??replacement??I bought on Ebay didn't work, I have unpick and repair it just to make it??serviceable! ??again, another lesson learnt, get a Lucas part not an unbranded bit of trash next time!
Not sure what I will write about next time…. ??hopefully I'll add some more pictures.
'later,
Drew.
A little blog about my Elf 