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MG MGB Technical - The missing link

What am I missing here?

Car ran fine on a warm day, parked overnight, didn;t want to start inthe morning. Did eventually start, but either 1) revs high and dies, as if starved for fuel, or 2) will idle rough almost indefinitely, but die at the first application of the throttle.

I found some crud int he gas, and the fuel pumps were all over the place in terms of delivery, so new pump and new softlines, as well as drain gas tank. Also swapped in a different set of carbs incase it was something there. But no change.

OK, electrical. Swapped distributors, no change, new coil, no change.

A timing light on the #1 plug only lights irregularly, and not at all on the lead from the coil to the dizzy. So something isn't right there, but what?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Steve
Steve Aichele

Could be a fracture in the link wire between diz terminal and contact breaker. The advance plate moves with that wire as the engine revs so might cause this sort of intermittent behaviour. Also the coil, condenser, rotor, cap, leads would all be cheap and quick to try if they've not been done recently Steve. Rich.

Rich

Had the same problem recently. Solved it by cleaning up contacts at fuse box (white wires), and by replacing/re-terminating both low voltage wires at the distributor (from fuse box to coil+ & from coil- to distributor).

Really surprised me -- it was acting for all the world like a fuel problem. Actually, for quite some time it had been acting like carb floats or poorly seating butterflies.

Larry Bailey

It's really odd, turned out to be a blocked balance/overflow tube. Never really thought about looking at that, but I was running out of pieces. Apparently I some of the crud in the gas mamanged to get inthere and block it up. A little shot of compressed air and it's running great (with new fuel line, coil, plugwires, pump, etc.) But it was an oportunity to test some items (ie fuel pump) and acquire backups of the ignition parts.

Thanks for all the suggestions.
Steve
Steve Aichele

This thread was discussed between 12/06/2005 and 13/06/2005

MG MGB Technical index

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