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Post by kelsham on Jan 26, 2013 10:11:37 GMT
I agree about the reliability of the car.
In my case it would be more about the driver.
Medication, glasses, wallet,wife, although she is difficult to lose. maps.
Positive earth so Sat nav needs to much fiddling to transfer..
Route worked out to avoid shopping centres, I did mention the wife would be with me?
Regards Kels.
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Post by dave1800 on Jan 26, 2013 12:32:19 GMT
I guess Mrs Kels doesn't read the messages you post here! I seem to remember you have fun with contact breakers and rotor arms on your journeys  Regards David I agree about the reliability of the car. In my case it would be more about the driver. Medication, glasses, wallet,wife, although she is difficult to lose. maps. Positive earth so Sat nav needs to much fiddling to transfer.. Route worked out to avoid shopping centres, I did mention the wife would be with me? Regards Kels. |
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Post by kelsham on Jan 26, 2013 12:52:33 GMT
Dave, I have just been into the garage to start the Landcrab, I have been unwell since the New Year began so it has been neglected.
Did it start? did it Hell.
Just kept churning over . I couldnt open the main garage door too much snow, so it was difficult to investigate. However when I opened the bonnet I immediately noticed the damper had unscrewed itself from the dashpot...... Again. It does this from time to time. I replaced it and the engine still failed to fire.
I went outside and cleared the snow from the door, the virus I am recovering from then showed it wasn't completely gone so I retired indoors. I am beggining to suspect the points are of poor quality, I must admit they are off Ebay and were very cheap.
I will atack the problem more scientifically in the next few days and report back.
I hate to say it but the modern ignition solutions are starting to sound attractive.
Regards Kels.
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Post by Penguin45 on Jan 27, 2013 1:15:23 GMT
Hope you fully recover soon, Kels.
Air, fuel, spark - you know the drill.
If you go the electronic route, spend enough money to get a decent one. The £30 ones don't last. And neither do the expensive ones starting with P.
Ady and I are currently investigating the 59D electronic one fitted to MG Metros with a view to putting it on the car. Might be interesting once we find out what the advance curve is.
Further to Indy's comment, all I'll say is that stockings are much more fun than tights.......
Ahem.
Chris.
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Post by dave1800 on Jan 27, 2013 1:36:42 GMT
Kels, sorry you're not well I hope you recover quickly. As Chris says do the basic checks. My (strong) advice is to find out the reason for the poor starting before considering electronic ignition which could temporarily mask the problem and then leave you with a bigger headache at the side of the road. Electronic ignition shouldn't in my opinion be used to cure a problem only improve the running and reduce maintenance. Assuming your fuel isn't too old and still has some volatility then I suggest you carry out the electrical tests - see my earlier post - especially relevant I think - as you have experienced poor connections in the past. Remember if the lucar spade connectors on the coil aren't a very tight fit they wil introduce quite sgnificant ignition losses. Also measure the resistance of the spark plug leads. All you need is a basic multimeter around £5 on Ebay or around £7-10 from Maplin / Machine Mart etc to accurately measure volts, amps and resistance. landcrabs.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tech&action=display&thread=384 You can buy (even more!) contacts breakers, distributor caps, rotor arms from Distributor Doctor www.distributordoctor.com/who get good write-ups on the net for supplying good quality components. Just remembered a problem with my mini not starting decades ago even though everything checked out and it was driving me crazy. A local mechanic told me to change the battery even though it spun the starter motor quite happily. It turned out that the battery voltage fell below I think 9V when turning the engine over. I have never understood how the battery can deliver the current to spin the starter but not have sufficient voltage under load. Anyway, eventually I did what he said and no more problems. You could check this by substituting a battery from another of your cars or using jump leads. Get well before you get too cold in the garage! Regards David |
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Post by indianajones on Jan 27, 2013 5:49:07 GMT
Nice to see the thread is still going, hope you get/got your crab sorted Kel.
As for our trip, just got back. Wendy did well, 4 adults and a boot full of beer, food and rifles.
My only complaint was that she didn't like going up some of the steeper hills, but when she dropped down from 100 to 80 km/h I would drop her into third and floor it and she'd chug up there in the end.
Gas use was better then I expected, according to 'Fuelly' she averaged 8.2L/100km (that's 34.6mpg for you UK lads.)
So from this trip I have decided I really need to get new discs for the front as the shuddering when braking in the 80-100 range is annoying and also that if I do this more often then Twin carbs would be a good idea. Single does the job, but I would like a little more steam from her if possible. Just need to decide if I got with 1' 1/2 or 1 3/4'
Cheers,
Andrew
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Post by dave1800 on Jan 27, 2013 7:46:56 GMT
Good to hear your trip went well. Fuel consumption sounds good. Lack of power on hills - how steep are they? It could be a number of things including low compression, weak mixture, retarded ignition timing or just the weight of the car and the power available reflects 1960s technology being driven by a young person! Not sure if twin carbs will help going up hills. The torque of the twin carb engine at 80km/h will be less than the single carb. Most benefit from twin carbs comes in at higher RPM - Alexander can advise much better on this. Have you measured the disc lateral runout to see whether it is the cause of the judder - it could be wheel balance or suspension bushes / joint etc. If it is the discs and they are in reasonable condition you may be able to skim them. I prefer not to disturb the front hubs if it can be avoided - maybe just me being over cautious they caused me more problems that anything during my time of ownership. Regards David Nice to see the thread is still going, hope you get/got your crab sorted Kel. As for our trip, just got back. Wendy did well, 4 adults and a boot full of beer, food and rifles. My only complaint was that she didn't like going up some of the steeper hills, but when she dropped down from 100 to 80 km/h I would drop her into third and floor it and she'd chug up there in the end. Gas use was better then I expected, according to 'Fuelly' she averaged 8.2L/100km (that's 34.6mpg for you UK lads.) So from this trip I have decided I really need to get new discs for the front as the shuddering when braking in the 80-100 range is annoying and also that if I do this more often then Twin carbs would be a good idea. Single does the job, but I would like a little more steam from her if possible. Just need to decide if I got with 1' 1/2 or 1 3/4' Cheers, Andrew |
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Post by indianajones on Jan 27, 2013 8:15:15 GMT
Hey David, Not sure on the hill bit, I guess it could be a little bit of myself expecting more. Some of the hills are around 4 to 1, so not extremely steep, but the car will notice it.
The car did have 4 people and a bit of stuff in the boot (nothing too heavy mind you) so I didn't expect it to keep pulling up the hill.
I know one of the cylinders has low compression, the mixture seems fine and did check before we left (but shall take another look).
As for the disc, I haven't measured anything, but I think it's the discs as I have had the wheels balanced and around a year ago I had the upper and lower ball joints replaced so I hope it's not them!
Interesting info regarding the carbs, didn't know a single gives more torque, so now I'm between a rock and a hard place as the TC would be handy for sitting at 100-120, but the torque of the single would be more useful around Auckland as it's very hilly.
-Andrew
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Post by dave1800 on Jan 27, 2013 9:19:50 GMT
Just to clarify what I tried to say. The twin carb engine gives more torque after around 5,000 rpm if you use the 1800S cam but less torque at lower rpm. This would probably also be true using the standard 1800 cam.
Wheels can go out of balance if you hit a pot hole but in my experience the 1800 isn't particularly sensitive to this and you would feel the steering shake at certain speeds. Assuming you haven't got a piston or pads sticking then measure the runout of the discs. In hundreds of thousand of miles (literally) I never experienced disc warpage - maybe I am lucky, but did replace them because of corrosion from the outer edge in.
My experience of judder when applying the brakes always turned out to be the pads or calipers needing to be freed or a ball joint needing to be re-shimmed if there wasn't an issue with wheel balance.
The effects of your low compression would certainly show up climbing a 1 in 4 hill which as you know in the UK is classified as steep.
Regards
David
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Post by dave1800 on Jan 27, 2013 10:05:57 GMT
Chris I guess you have seen this site www.aseriesspares.co.uk/ignition/a-sd-electronic-distributors/4-cylinder-standard-road-electronic-distributors/59d-a-series-electronic-distributor-mg-metro-/-mini-a-block-standard-road/prod_859.htmlAs they suggest a rolling road session can help you set up the ignition does this mean the units are externally re-programmable I wonder? I don't think so, but maybe you could ask them. I assume you have access to a s/h MG Metro distributor with a dog drive? Note this unit requires a coil with a resistance of <1.5 ohms. Here is a link to some advance curves from early A series engines. www.teglerizer.com/mgstuff/advance_curves.htm - no idea how accurate it is but I know it's very difficult to get this data. There used to be a tuning guide in England , I can't remember the name, that listed the advance curves for all the popular cars maybe someone knows or has a copy. No doubt the 59D from the later A+ engines will be somewhat different to suit the emissions regs of the time and I imagine have less advance as the head flow was improved. I recall ignition timing isn't your favourite subject - just be careful, too much advance = disaster, too little = very hot engine. There are quite a few threads about the difficulties of setting up the equivalent of the mechanical weights and advance and vacuum correctly. The standard distributors were set up quite conservatively to avoid engine damage, erring on the side of too much retard. However, if you can access the program it opens the door to getting improved performance and fuel economy as long as you don't try and push it to the limit. Not sure if the MG Metro used a knock sensor to retard the ignition if necessary - I don't know if a knock sensor would actually work with all the A / B series clatter as the piezo knock sensors work like tuned microphones. Sorry if I have asked before, I'm getting old. Your car has twin 1.5" SUs I believe. Do you have the standard 1800 cam or the MGB or 1800S version fitted and which distributor 1800Mk1, Mk11, Mk111 or "S"? It could be that if you have a mix that your car could benefit quite a lot from a programmable distributor unit to optimise the power and economy as well as compensating for the changes in fuel since the cars were designed. Regards David Ady and I are currently investigating the 59D electronic one fitted to MG Metros with a view to putting it on the car. Might be interesting once we find out what the advance curve is. Chris. |
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Post by tommydp on Jan 27, 2013 10:38:02 GMT
Nice to see the thread is still going, hope you get/got your crab sorted Kel. As for our trip, just got back. Wendy did well, 4 adults and a boot full of beer, food and rifles. My only complaint was that she didn't like going up some of the steeper hills, but when she dropped down from 100 to 80 km/h I would drop her into third and floor it and she'd chug up there in the end. Gas use was better then I expected, according to 'Fuelly' she averaged 8.2L/100km (that's 34.6mpg for you UK lads.) So from this trip I have decided I really need to get new discs for the front as the shuddering when braking in the 80-100 range is annoying and also that if I do this more often then Twin carbs would be a good idea. Single does the job, but I would like a little more steam from her if possible. Just need to decide if I got with 1' 1/2 or 1 3/4' Cheers, Andrew Hi Andrew! Glad she made the trip without problems. The crabs like a longer journey now and then:-) I strongly suggest you look into all the basics before thinking of twin carbs. The standard 1800 should be more than capable of going up steep hills without problems, even when heavily loaded or pulling a caravan etc. If you need to floor it in 3rd at 80 kmh something's not right. In my experience they should climb any hill in 4th above 60 kmh or so. That's one of the reasons I like these engines, they never seem to struggle and have plenty of pull going up hills. And we have quite some hills here, too. Check fuel, is it still too lean? Look at the plugs. Your fuel consumption is very good under these conditions I'd say, so perhaps it's too lean. Will it pull better up hill if you pull the choke out? Fuel pump ok, float setting? Dirty fuel filter? Ignition timing ok? Points gap. Is the distributor's advance working? Check with timing light. Perhaps you should try to advance the timing a bit. All in all, I suggest you leave it as it is. I had an 1800 with twin carbs once and noticed no difference in pulling up hills. It was a bit quicker at overtaking at high speed though. I've also had both standard and TC Marinas and had the same experience comparing these. Regards, Tommy |
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Post by threelitre on Jan 28, 2013 0:42:38 GMT
Our S always had a little flat spot in 4th between 80 and 90 or a bit more kph. It does climb even steep hills well, but if you want acceleration 3rd solves this problem in no time - up to about 110kph... I can only compare my s/c 1800 automatic with our S, and it is clear which one has more pull under any conditions  In terms of fuel consumption would neither of these two match your excellent results! 1972 my father tried a single carb 1800 (and I think a Maxi) to replace his first S, but was very disappointed by both so went searching for a used S - a difficult task in Germany even back then. Regards, Alexander |
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Post by indianajones on Jan 28, 2013 3:34:37 GMT
Just a small update, today I turned the mixture nut down a flat to enrich her and I think she responded well to it, so perhaps I might have been running a bit lean. I'll see how she goes around town and go from there.
-Andrew
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In terms of fuel consumption would neither of these two match your excellent results! 1972 my father tried a single carb 1800 (and I think a Maxi) to replace his first S, but was very disappointed by both so went searching for a used S - a difficult task in Germany even back then.