Running ok at last

[PhilH73]

I've been refurbing and renewing for months now (well since I first bought her actually) but one problem always remained and spoilt the drive....stalling when coming to a stop and hot start issues. This usually meant it happening at the busiest of junctions with a bunch of irate people behind either staring, waving their arms or even yelling "you flash Tw*t "(no i) when they finally got past....now were talking an s here so not exactly flash

Anyway I finished the brake overhaul and took her off the axles and was met with a completely flat battery, so off she came and trickled to full which gave enough to run the clock for 30 seconds but that was about it. Convinced myself it was giving up anyway and took a trip to Romford Halfrauds to buy a new one...yes I know I was ripped off but it was a Sunday and I was impatient and she had sat dormant long enough! Whilst I changed the battery I cleaned up the battery to chassis earth connection and noticed while poking about that the hose on the warm up regulator was not sitting right. ( god only knows how I didn't see it before) so I pushed home and secured with a jubilee. She started up fine so I replaced the ridiculously placed fuse board against the crap offcut of ply and put back the upper carpet cover in the footwell knocking off the pink fuel relay in the process followed by an expletive or two.

So now all back together asked my daughter if she fancied going for a test flight, wedged ourselves in and buckled up expectantly. Turn the key...turns over but doesn't catch....now I had this problem before and it was the bullett connectors to the tacho but not this time and at this point I'm starting to lose patience and had to stop myself from ripping out the loom and throwing it down the street! Expletives follow again, made worse by my laughing neighbour with his Griff and comments over why I started all this and why the bloody thing is so fragile!! As it turns out it was the ignition fuse and I have a replacement and it fires up!

So away we go and one minute later its all smiles and I love the old girl again...to make things better somewhere between a new battery, earth connection cleaning and a relocated warm up regulator hose the hot start, erratic idle, hunting and cutting out has gone!! No foot on the gas when slowing needed, idle steady and she starts right back up when hot

So all is good in the world again..well for a few days at least!

[magpies]

great stuff

[glenrobbo]

Nice one Phil.

Just in case your ignition fuse blows again:
I had recurring problems last year with this, and had half the car apart trying to find the cause. Basically there are many feeds off this fuse, most of them have light green cable.
Long story short, I eventually discovered that it was caused by the multi-socket adapter plugged into the cig lighter socket. To be fair, it had been soaked in the rain a few times.
The original cig lighter socket is not very well constructed and can also cause a short circuit sometimes.
So if your engine cuts out in future, starts on the key but will not sustain, and the alt w/light only comes on when you turn the engine over, and the instrument lights aren't working, that's a good place to start investigating why the fuse has blown.
Or it could be the wiring to the handbrake switch... or....

I always carry a plentiful supply of red fuses nowadays....
Good luck!

[PhilH73]

I'll add it to the list of concerns Glen