Mk2 1.8 HL Automatic update

[mickthefitter]

Thanks Chris. Parts compatibility at last. I don't know how I missed it. I've looked before more than once. Tonight I picked the dizzy cap and leads up to move them, since they're off since I took the starter off, everything was bathed in late evening sunlight and I looked and saw the ruddy great crack running from the rim up to one of the electrodes. I don't think this has been the whole story about the lack of performance for one minute, but it sure hasn't been helping. I don't think I've EVER had a cracked distributor cap before. Its just been one of those fabled things I've heard about but never experienced. I'll get some new leads too.

[Morris McKinnon]

I've had a stone get thrown up from the front wheel and hit the cap which smashed a great big chunk out of it! You'll be surprised how a worn or cracked distributor cap can affect a cars running, worn points do the same. Can make an engine sound and feel like it's on it's last legs.

[mickthefitter]

Moggy and Marina

[mickthefitter]

I've had a stone get thrown up from the front wheel and hit the cap which smashed a great big chunk out of it! You'll be surprised how a worn or cracked distributor cap can affect a cars running, worn points do the same. Can make an engine sound and feel like it's on it's last legs.

Like mine then!

[Morris McKinnon]

Hopefully that might have been the issue you've been having all this time. In my teens before I had any knowledge of how an engine worked, bad points and distributor was something I used to get conned by with some garages quite often. They'd say it needed this and that and all it was the damn cap and points!

[mickthefitter]

I once read in a magazine where someone said that if you go in the garage to do something, and you only end up doing fifteen minutes worth of work, as long as it is in the right direction, it's progress. So far this Bank Holiday weekend I've been underachieving as ever, though not helped at all by a maintenance call-out to work this afternoon. But I did get in my puny under sized garage, which I've said I cannot work in, jacked the front of the car up a bit and put it on axle stands, and bolted the puny under sized starter motor back on. Certainly these aren't ideal working conditions! Next job, I hope to fit that relay and get rid of the hot-wired starter button while connecting the starter back up.

But while the car was in the air, I noticed one front wheel still touching the ground, and the other raised. Odd, since the axle stands were both on the same setting and placed in the same position either side of the chassis. The answer - the bump stop rubber has disappeared on the nearside. And the one on the offside looks a bit like a Shreddie. I am guessing there are one of two possibilities here - either they are totally unobtainable, or they are a Morris Minor part.

[mickthefitter]

Hopefully that might have been the issue you've been having all this time. In my teens before I had any knowledge of how an engine worked, bad points and distributor was something I used to get conned by with some garages quite often. They'd say it needed this and that and all it was the damn cap and points!

You know, it's astounded me this, because I've been swapping points and condensers and rotor arms until they went out of fashion, and I even had a full set of ignition spares INCLUDING a 25D distributor cap, that I never needed to use, for the Mini and Wolseley Hornet I had before the Marina, and I kept these parts because at first I thought this car had a 25D distributor too, but when I got it I saw it was different and NOT having spotted the cracked cap, and umpteen other things being wrong or apparently wrong, like the blocked up radiator, leaky gearbox, knackered fuel pump and bodged starter circuit, I've tried everything I thought I knew and its still buggered me up. So now I've got some very shiny HS4s to fit and I'm wondering if the expense was worthwhile.... having said that, when I DID manage to do a compression test, cold, number 3 cylinder did seem a bit low. BUT....when it is initially back together, set up, and with some new ignition parts, if it feels and sounds okay (if) I shall not be in any hurry to tear the head off.

[Morris McKinnon]

The carburettors were definitely worthwhile, even if they didn't need doing it's piece of mind... and they look stunning
From the work you've done so far it starting more to sound like one of those "well bugger me, it was that thing all along!" kind of moments.

[mickthefitter]

Quite possibly, Morris.

[PHUQ]

Fingers crossed!

Starter was definitely not healthy by the sounds of it, and twin SUs can be a bit of a pain to get set up when they are in good nick, trying to get a tired pair to play nicely together is even less fun so I don't think you've wasted your money at all even if none of it was the root cause.

[mickthefitter]

Saturday I bolted the starter on, this Easter Monday I connected it up. It turned with the flick of the key and since at that moment the 'bodge' starter button was still located in the engine bay, I gave it a few flicks with that too. All looks good. Although I do have some questions about the way this 'small' starter motor is wired, that I'll come to later.

So next I wanted to do the long overdue mod to the wiring, putting in a relay into the starter circuit as per Kilroy's advice. First I decided to get rid of the redundant Kenlowe fan wiring and tidy up the hacked about parts of the loom that had been butchered to fit that starter button. The two brown leads from the battery positive terminal had both been cut and rejoined with domestic terminal blocks. One was just cut and joined, I know not why, the other had a blue wire clamped in the terminal along with the brown, to send a live feed to the starter solenoid via the button, by-passing the ignition switch. I think butchering car looms like this ought to be a punishable offense. I rejoined the brown cables using 30 amp heat shrink bullet connectors (or at least that's how Halfords describe them - I always thought bullet connectors were the type that plug into each other - these take a wire at each end and crimp).

I was able to find Kilroy's photo and instructions of how to wire the relay from my very early post asking about my 'mystery starter button', and the reason why my engine didn't always turn with the key, and I'm now 80% done on that mod - not finishing it today brought about by TWO trips to Halfords and STILL finding myself short of a 30 amp spade connector, having miscalculated (I've got a bucketful of 5 amp connectors) plus a previously arranged appointment at the pub, with my friend Dennis, who is selling his classic motor bikes at the next H&H motorcycle auction at the National Motorcycle Museum. Well...at least I got the relay clicking with the turn of the ignition key, even if I didn't get the wiring to the starter solenoid finished.

Although I didn't start at the crack of dawn and finish at sunset, it sometimes frustrates me a bit where time goes and how little seems to be achieved, but as I said to Dennis in the pub, working on my car usually involves plenty of walking backwards and forwards fetching things from the house, from the shed, taking them to the garage, locking doors behind me because the house is out of sight when I'm on the drive or in the garage; today also involved a trip into the loft looking for my electric paint stripper (to heat shrink the bullet connectors) and running a 10 metre extension lead down the garden and over the fence to power it. Then when I pack away much of the process has to be reversed. A well equipped workshop with everything to hand would be great, but I don't have one. But the relay installation only has about 15 minutes more work to do, once I've got a spade connector, and it looks neat. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of it yet...

So, the last pictures in this sequence are of my starter solenoid and wiring. The white/red wire with a 35 amp spade connector goes to a male spade terminal, then a red cable goes from the battery +ve to a stud on the solenoid. It looks like somebody has made a little plate that fits over that stud, and a nut and bolt holds the brown cable and a green and brown wire above the red cable, so the brown, green and brown, and red are all connected to the same stud. Now I don't instinctively understand circuitry but this must be correct because it works. What further puzzles me is that the solenoid has an unoccupied 5 amp spade terminal, and my wiring loom has an original-looking 2 amp spade connector flapping about doing nothing, that apart from the mis-match in sizes, looks like it might belong there - but clearly everything works without it. Anyone got any suggestions?

[JubileeNut]

Good pictures! Bet your glad to get rid of that bodged wiring?

[MarinaCoupe]

I'll bet that at some time the wrong battery was fitted with different terminal posts so they chopped the old connectors off and substituted some that fitted.

[Kilroy]

Here is my thought about the spare terminal on the starter.
Later models featured a 6 volt ignition coil with a '6 volt' ballast resistor so that it could happily be attached to a 12 volt car.
When you operated the starter, a terminal on the starter solenoid supplied power that bypassed the ballast resistor - so the ignition got a shot in the arm while the starter was effectively dropping the available voltage for the ignition when it needed it most.
I believe that is what you have on your starter solenoid.
If you have a 12 volt coil then it would make no difference at all.
Coils have their normal operating voltage stamped on the base as a rule.
Any coils with a '6' are designed to run in conjunction with a ballast resistor.
I believe this arrangement would work well with 1800 engines as they require a lot of energy to crank over.
The 6 volt coil method was adopted for all of my Mk3 cars but none of the Mk1 or 2 models I have encountered.

[mickthefitter]

Good pictures! Bet your glad to get rid of that bodged wiring?

I certainly am. Its funny (sort of) how I looked right past all those terminal blocks in the auction house, when I was trying to assess the state of the body and interior and check the fluid levels. A bit like when you lose a ball point pen and it's in the drawer all along, where you looked three times already!