Distributor and timing

Well my parts arrived from Rimmer Bros and so after reading the workshop manual a few times I bit the bullet and started with the distributor to replace the condenser, points and rotor arm. All the bits came out easy enough but the first problem was struck when the new condenser didn't fit without fouling against the centre cam. Checking the old and new there is clearly about 1mm difference in the diameter of the main cylinder of the condenser so I had to bend the mounting bracket to gain the required clearance. Once I'd got the points in place I used a 0.015" feeler gauge and tightened everything up. lastly on went the rotor arm and the cap was put back on for a quick test. Hooray.. it fired up no problem but did sound a bit rough so then came the bit that I was uncertain of... static timing.

New parts installed

I needn't have worried as using the workshop manual I first found 7 deg BTDC (I went with 7 deg as I'm using unleaded 95 ron with additive and the manual states if you're using old 4 star 97 ron to set it to 7 deg), and then with the rotor arm pointing towards where cylinder 1 is firing TDC I undid the pinch bolt and rotated the whole distributor very slightly until the points just separated and then tightened the pinch bolt back up and put the cap back on.

It started first time and once it had settled and the choke was back in I left it running for about 5 minutes and it sounded great. I can't wait for a clear day now so I can give it a spin to see if its okay or still needs a tweak. At some some point in the future I will try dynamic timing but with no timing light it will have to wait.

After the high of making it work I then noticed a small leak coming from the top radiator hose. It looked more like a loose clip than a split but I couldn't tighten the clip as it was solid, so I gave it a squirt of WD40 and left it for a couple of hours. When I came back I was able to tighten it up a bit more and when I fired her up again the problem seemed to have been solved.