Backfiring and stalling

[general_lee]

Have just had the best (trouble free) weekend I've ever had in my two years of owning a 4.0 HC - top down most of it ... it having taken that long to sort out a host of starting / overheating problems. Today, my girlfriend took the car out shopping and before she got there it started to misfire and cut out when idling. It always restarted, but would continue to misfire / idle badly. Anyone got any ideas on what might have gone wrong. I changed the leads lately for a set of Lucas leads, but it's been fine since then (about 500 miles)and the AA chap checked to ensure none had worked loose. :grumpy

[trefor]

Simple. Don't take the car shopping or maybe it's her driving?

This could be lots of things.

I'd check the stepper motor is clean though - see The Bible for info on how to do this. My car had similar symptoms once upon arrival at work, a quick polish of the end of the stepper at lunchtime solved the problem. Best get a garage to clean the stepper properly afterwards though (they will use special fuel system cleaner to dissolve any carbon deposits and small animals caught in the inlet tract).

Could be something completely different though ...

T/.

[amayson]

I am new to TVRs (three weeks) but I have had a similar problems on other cars: tracking on the rotor arm or distributor cap can cause this suddenly, especially if you have had the cap off recently and accidentally got crud in it.
Once, with a rotor arm emergency, a friend took the arm out and filed it all over with a coarse file . It worked fine but I replaced it as soon as I could.