All going wrong...

[d50cyx]

Help please! Just driven back to London from Bracknell, and it's possibly been the worst journey of my life! Sitting in traffic is never much fun, but when your Chimaera refuses to idle it's even worse. It's never happened before...

The symptoms are as follows: driving along absolutely fine, but then traffic grinds to a halt, as do you. As soon as you disengage the clutch, it starts trying to idle at about 300 revs. Needless to say, it can't do it, so stutters to a halt, with the battery light coming on for a second, only to recover and sit at 2000 revs. It then calms down to 1200, 950, and then the scenario repeats itself. Every now and again, it stalls completely. So I ended up keeping it ticking over at about 2000 revs, which is a bit of a nightmare when you're trying to use the clutch and the brakes. This happened all the way along the M4, until I found somewhere to pull over on the South Circular. Turned it off, and went for a short stroll... thought, I know what, I'll just check the oil. Did, and it was half way inbetween, so thought I'd add some anyway... and guess what? It behaved all the way home...

Does anybody have a clue what might be wrong? Surely it can't be the oil?

Thanking you in advance...
Mike.

[anonymous-user]

Try cleaning the Stepper Motor.

Lee

[Pies]

And its situated here

[anonymous-user]

I knew that piccy would appear

[Pies]

Its quite handy ain't it

should be rogues gallery

[anonymous-user]

Here's my favourite.



Fuse Link.

[Boosted LS1]

Good God Man, has Mrs Pies been out with the solvol polish?

[Nick P]

Pies said:

And its situated here

Wish my plenum chamber looked that shiney...WOW

[Pies]

Think i better point out that that is NOT my plenum chamber but it belonged to "mutleytvr" i meerly took the photo

[simpo two]

When my idle was playing up and stalling at lights etc, I used the accelerator to keep the revs up and braked with the handbrake. Tricky but it can be done.

[TT Tim]

simpo two said:

When my idle was playing up and stalling at lights etc, I used the accelerator to keep the revs up and braked with the handbrake. Tricky but it can be done.

...and the car in front finally stopped me!

Tim

[V8 Archie]

Yeah! Some ct used that method of stopping on me on Saturday (after sitting in at the lights for 30 seconds) .

[Silverstone]

What a Stepper motor do ?

[K4TRV]

Silverstone said:

What a Stepper motor do ?

Hopefully when cleaned will sort D50cyx/Mikes problems out.....!! See original posting !!

When clean and functioning correctly allows smooth tick-over/pick-up/slow running of Rover V8s in TVRs.

Trev McM

[d50cyx]

Well assuming quite a few things, I may have solved the problem... Spent the weekend away, and only got back late last night, so no time to try anything. Drove out this mornin, and at first all was well, but then the symptoms were back. Limped over to my father's, had a look at the picture again and, once we'd eliminated the coil (!), we found a very large spanner and unscrewed what the piccie appeared to be looking at...
Very peculiar motor! Looked like a small cone mounted on a spring. Got a wire brush, cleaned all the sooty mess off, put it back in and......
well, it's a nice drive from Maidenhead to Bracknell, but I'm sure I'll find some traffic in the next few days.... for now though, no news can only be good news! And if it really is as easy as that, might do it every time I check the oil... what do you reckon?

Many thanks for all your help - bible is now on order...

[Pies]

Well you cleaned the right bit

[d50cyx]

Drove back into town last night and guess what! Stalling all over the place... will have another look at it over the weekenk. Just to check - which bit should I make sure is clean and shiny? Just the cone, or should the spring be all lovely as well? And should the shaft move in and out of the main housing easily? Or is it meant to be really stiff?

[squirrelz]

d50cyx said:

Got a wire brush, cleaned all the sooty mess off, put it back in and......

Surely a wire brush is way too abrasive for cleaning the stepper motor cone? I thought you were supposed to use a rag with some solvent on or something?

[Big Al.]

I use 0000 steel wool!
I believe the cone is made of hardened steel.
I personally only clean the cone, leaving the spring alone, then just a squirt of WD40 on the shaft.
ASAIK the stepper motor only moves under voltage, it appears "fixed" when unplugged.

>> Edited by Big Al. on Thursday 27th November 17:13

[pbrettle]

Or if you want, liberal doses of WD40 does a rather nice trick of cleaning the crap off. It is quite amazing how much crud you can get off the spring area....just make sure its not caked in WD40 when you put it back.