9 replies to this topic

[jamieburke17]

Me and my pal have been trying to start my newly built 1380 all day, it does start after afew seconds of turning over but cuts out a second or two later, it will run for a little while on 'start ya bastard' but not for long.. we have played about with the ignition moving the dizzy, the spark isnt great, im sure the ignition is set up right and it isnt 180 degrees out, i know 90% of fuel problems are electrical so im hesitating to blame the carb, im running an aldon electrical dizzy with a ballast resistor wire, is that the problem do you think? 

 i have a new coil new, ht leads, new dizzy, and the carb has just been rebuilt, im running a facet fuel pump bolted to the boot floor to an adjustable inline regulator and to the carb, any ideas? cheers!

[monkey]

Do you have fuel at the carb? Does it fire if you pour a capful of petrol down the carb throat? Not still got the NOS plumbed in? :-p

[jamieburke17]

fuel coming though the pipe at the carb, not sure if it is going into the intake manifold,  havnt tried pooring petrol in there, should i?

Edited by jamieburke17, 22 August 2015 - 09:00 PM.

[peter-b]

The 'start you bastard' is the same as putting fuel down carb. It it doesn't keep running on it then you probably have ignition problem. If as you said, the spark is weak, then you should be looking in that direction. Try starting it and when it cuts out, quickly remove a plug and see if its wet. I'm always reluctant to pour fuel down carbs on mini's as it hard to do succesfully and you could have an ignition source if the exhaust manifold leaks. Aerostart is a bit safer, especially if you use the straw thingo off a WD40 can.

[jamieburke17]

it does seem to run on easy start.. 

[monkey]

If it runs on easy start, but not without, surly it's a fuel issue? You got fuel in the float chamber?
Still worth looking into that weak spark though

[monkey]

Also. How old is the fuel? Old fuel does go stale :-/

[jamieburke17]

fuel is pretty knew, so wont be that. to check if there is fuel in the float chamber should i just put the pipe in then see how much comes back out? 

[peter-b]

Sorry I got a bit mislead when you mentioned it started and ran only a short time on it. Have you tried manually choking it to see if that's gets a response?
Weak spark can fire SYB but not fuel.

[dklawson]

Start from scratch.  Don't assume anything is right.

 

You've been working on the engine... set the valve gaps with the engine cold.

Set the static timing anywhere from 5-8 BTDC to get the engine started.  Do not just arbitrarily turn the distributor.  I'll post a link below to my storage pages.  You can download my PDF on setting static timing.  It was written for points ignitions but your Aldon Ignitor behaves the same as points (as far as setting static timing) so you can follow the steps just the same.

 

You said you have a ballast ignition setup and the Aldon distributor.  I assume this is new to the engine.  There are several things that must be done "right" for this to work.  I am guessing the car will only start/run while you have the key held in the start position and dies when you release the key to "run".

If you are using a ballast ignition you will have a pink/white and white/yellow wire on coil (+) and with your ignition module you will have a black wire on coil (-).  Where did you connect the module's red wire?  If you connected it to coil (+), that is not going to work well with the ballast wiring.  You need to connect the module's red were to a switched, un-fused terminal on the fuse block to supply a full 12V to the ignition module.  This is a must.  Alternatively you could buy a new 12V coil and remove/bypass the ballast system.

 

Once you have all the above sorted, try to start the engine with modest amounts of choke.  If it will run on starting fluid but dies as soon as you stop spraying... you have a fuel problem to sort out.  By the way, do not keep using starting fluid, use a bit of gas tipped down the carb throat.  Starting fluid sprayed continuously into the inlet has a bad reputation for washing away top end lubricants... which you don't want to do on this presumably just completed engine.

 

Look for my static timing PDF on the page accessed by this hyperlink.