I bought a K10 (1986) in November last year for my son to learn to drive in. When I got the car, it was running really roughly, but there were no ratlles and no smoke, it changed gear OK and nothing clonked in the suspension. For £100 it seemed OK, but clearly, the engine needed tuning.
It had had a new rotor arm, dizzy cap and leads, but within a week it stopped starting. New points, condenser, coil and vacuum leaks sorted, Bob's yer uncle it's running.
I've run cars of this vintage before, but was suprised to find from Haynes that:
Plug gap is 0.8 - 0.9mm - not 0.7- 0.8mm I'm used to
Points gap is 0.45 - 0.55mm - not 0.3 - 0.4mm I'm used to
Timing is 2° ATDC not X°BTDC as I'm used to.
The previous owner had set it to the "used to" settings, so using the correct settings made a big difference and I had it running much better.
It jerked a bit on acceleration, some kind of misfire I guessed. This was improved by adjusting the tappets and adjusting the fuel level in the carb - I learned that from the master Sammo (Y) - This is an incredibly easy thing to check ( a rag and a torch - job done), mine was low and I reset it by bending the tab on the float - a one hour job tops). However, the misfire never went away completely.
One month later, Eastbourne to Bridgwater and back in one day - 400 miles at 55 mpg, nice
- still misfiring slightly when trying to accelerate. New plugs with the correct gap produced an improvement but still no cigar.
So what is amiss now?
Its done 120K on as far as I can tell, the original distributor. So I stripped the dizzy down to the mechanical advance/retard weights. This is not a difficult job and first time round it took about an hour. I cleaned everything in petrol, removing some very old looking grease, lubed it up with LHM grease and reassembled "in the reverse order". I had put the cam on for the points 180° out of phase, so it didn't fire at all. Once that was sorted, it fired up straight away.
Plugs and timing checked, mixture set with Colourtune, and it really is purring like a kitten. It pulls smoothly from cold up hill. Once warm, I can accelerate from 15 - 20 mph in top gear - sad I know - and it never hesitates or misfires at all.
I'm sorry for the long tale, but my points were that:
1. Plugs, points and timing are slightly different to what I had experienced before and had I not bought a Haynes manual, I would still be setting them wrong
2. Check the fuel level in the float bowl! Rag, torch - piece of cake
3. After 120K, things like the weights in the distributor need cleaning and re-greasing. They never turn up in a maintenance schedule but after 20 years I guess they're going to need an overhaul.
4. Read the forum - the infos out there
I hope you find this as useful as I have reading the stuff on this forum
Tricky
It had had a new rotor arm, dizzy cap and leads, but within a week it stopped starting. New points, condenser, coil and vacuum leaks sorted, Bob's yer uncle it's running.
I've run cars of this vintage before, but was suprised to find from Haynes that:
Plug gap is 0.8 - 0.9mm - not 0.7- 0.8mm I'm used to
Points gap is 0.45 - 0.55mm - not 0.3 - 0.4mm I'm used to
Timing is 2° ATDC not X°BTDC as I'm used to.
The previous owner had set it to the "used to" settings, so using the correct settings made a big difference and I had it running much better.
It jerked a bit on acceleration, some kind of misfire I guessed. This was improved by adjusting the tappets and adjusting the fuel level in the carb - I learned that from the master Sammo (Y) - This is an incredibly easy thing to check ( a rag and a torch - job done), mine was low and I reset it by bending the tab on the float - a one hour job tops). However, the misfire never went away completely.
One month later, Eastbourne to Bridgwater and back in one day - 400 miles at 55 mpg, nice
- still misfiring slightly when trying to accelerate. New plugs with the correct gap produced an improvement but still no cigar.So what is amiss now?
Its done 120K on as far as I can tell, the original distributor. So I stripped the dizzy down to the mechanical advance/retard weights. This is not a difficult job and first time round it took about an hour. I cleaned everything in petrol, removing some very old looking grease, lubed it up with LHM grease and reassembled "in the reverse order". I had put the cam on for the points 180° out of phase, so it didn't fire at all. Once that was sorted, it fired up straight away.
Plugs and timing checked, mixture set with Colourtune, and it really is purring like a kitten. It pulls smoothly from cold up hill. Once warm, I can accelerate from 15 - 20 mph in top gear - sad I know - and it never hesitates or misfires at all.
I'm sorry for the long tale, but my points were that:
1. Plugs, points and timing are slightly different to what I had experienced before and had I not bought a Haynes manual, I would still be setting them wrong
2. Check the fuel level in the float bowl! Rag, torch - piece of cake
3. After 120K, things like the weights in the distributor need cleaning and re-greasing. They never turn up in a maintenance schedule but after 20 years I guess they're going to need an overhaul.
4. Read the forum - the infos out there
I hope you find this as useful as I have reading the stuff on this forum
Tricky
