Hello all, I have been recommended that I come and speak to you people by vaious people in the Birmingham direction I met...

Some background...

I have a falcon 4 wheeled kit car built on a 1975 2cv (though, having said this im not sure how much of it is from said original car - the engine and gearbox deferentially are not! Look like a 1980s set)

I got this thing together and working, then one day it decided it stopped starting reliably, it genrally would do nothing, and if it would do something then it would generally splutter and die. I then got busy with work, so sheeted it up and left it to stand untill life was a little bit less hectic.

Come September, I went back to this project, and it had new points, new condenser, new leads, new plugs, tapits done... (you get the idea!) and whilst it was better it still wasnt right. Once it had been running it wouldn't re-start, would choke under heavy acceleration from idle, and would run out of power in the high revs. I eventualy tracked this do a faulty coil, only to discover that the other coil I had seemed to be duff to.

So I duely went to my friendly local car parts shop and bought myself a new coil, then spent the following week trying to work out why this thing still wouldn't do what it was supost to when it warmed up.

Well, there was me presuming that a new coil couldn't be the problem - it was new! Turned out it was though, when it was misbehaving I swapped the coil out and it worked first time. So I trotted back to said car shop and got another new coil.

Now this seemed to mainly solve my problems, or at least it would run for 10-15 mins before it started misbehaving (and it was enough to get the car though its MOT in time to go to this months meet up!)

So, I took my newly working car to see some of its brothers, sisters and cousins at a meet up about 10 miles from my house. It got there fine, basically behaved its self. It then promptly died about half a mile in to the journey home. - In highnsite this was partly caused by a steep hill and less fuel in the tank than I had presumed but despite mine and the AA mans best efforts for about 2 hours we could not get this thing to re-start reliably. Personal I reckoned this was largely due to the battery going a bit flat, but even with his booster pack on it it didnt want to know. The alternator seems to do something, at least the voltage on the system goes up as you accelerate, and the voltage gage on the dash shows something healthy when your driving at speed. With the engine running at around 3000 revs (or so the counter tells me) it seems to be chucking out about 13.5v.

So anyway, today I went to have another go at it (having fully charged the battery inside). It started more or less first time. Once it had warmed up I tried spraying stuff around the manifold etc to see if it was leaking - it didnt seem to make any difference to the idle speed on the engine so im guessing not. I took it for a drive around the local area (I must have covered around 10 miles with out going more than about a mile from home - can always push it home if it decides its had enough!). It ran generally well (though im not convinced by the power at the top end of the revs), but then started getting ropey about 20 minuets in. I refuse to believe that 20 minuets of driving with no lights on (other than occasional indicators) will take enough out of my 60ah battery to have any effect on the running.

So... im back to having a dead coil... right? Once I got home I swapped the coil for another one and it seemed to work fine again (until that coil warmed up, at which point I swapped it for yet another coil, which again worked find until it warmed up). As it stands I have 3 elderly dead coils, and have had one defiantly faulty new one. Do I really have another new faulty one? I dont really want to take it back to the car shop unless I know for a fact it is faulty, and if I have had 2 identical faulty ones from there im not sure its worth trying a 3rd!

So, what dose anyone suggest? Dose anyone in the South Birmingham area have a deferentially working coil I can try and see if it makes my car work (or try my coil and see if it makes there's break!). Is there anything that could be killing coils (other than them being left powerd, but they are not - it turns off with the ignition as it should)

I have found these on ebay - are they any good - they are deferentially cheaper and lets be honest - cant be much worse than what I have at the moment!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Special-12-Vo ... 27beedb276

Any help gratefully revived - I feal that the brick wall is starting to win against my head!

Tev

I'd say the problem isnt the coils its something making them heat up but if you've checked that lot can't think of much else that would. Fitted in a hot place???

I've got a stack of bollocksed coils in my 2cv that all do the same thing when they're hot. Buy a harley coil and all will probably be fine. The other problem might be caused by the Falcon kit on your 1975 2cv chassis. I reckon if you replaced this with a 1975 2cv bodyshell then you'd find the whole experience much better.

Tev,
I find it hard to believe that you've been unlucky enough to be sold several faulty coils, so you need to look elsewhere for the cause of this problem.
For instance, if the points gap is too small, the engine will start and run fine but the coil is likely to overheat after a while...

Have you bought one of those HT spark testers, as I recommended on another forum?

ken.

Welcome Tev.

PM me at some point and pop over to mine (I'm only in Longbridge so it should make it ) and we'll have a good look over it for you.

Hi tev and good to see you here. The car started fine after the WASPs meeting so I guess things have got worse then?

Does sound like the coil but Im with Ken that its unlikley they all are duff from the get go

Check that" Healthy" alt output it shouldnt go above 14.5V under any conditions if it does it will cause premature failure of many components.

as well as opening the points box to check points gap/dwell take all the stuff out and start with a fresh set of points and condenser.
The condenser fails in 2, ways open and closed-one stops the car starting the other causes failure when the condenser starts to get hot. Always fit Ducellier/valeo ones and consider points assisted. Boyer or Vellaman(maplins) kits work well and take the strain off the points, the vellaman does away with the condenser all together.

Sean

Yea, I was merrily driving back, got about half a mile up the hill and it just died (on a very narrow piece of road), I did get a very friendly and helpful AA man though!

I haven't sourced a spark / ht tester as of yet, in all honesty I havnt got round to it!

The reason for Blaming the coil is that when it starts playing up, doing a coil swap solves the problem. The reason for not thinking the car is killing them is that all of the coils (other than the original one) dont seem to get worse from use, they are just as bad the first time I tried them as ever.

Now, this dosent negate there being another problem, but the fact that my 3 second hand coils work much worse than the new one implies that at least they are probably not right.

As for where the coil is mounted - it is more or less in the same position as on a 2cv, though admittedly its a smaller space so I suppose likely to get hotter.

I have done a fair bit of playing with points, dwell angle and gaps - none seems to make it any better. On my list of things still to try is change the points.

As for alternator voltage, I havnt managed to get my multimeter to register anything above about 13.8v at any engine speed, though that dosnt mean to say it never dose - im more aware that the alternator may not put out enough voltage! For along time (and the first 3 of the 5 coils) the car did not have a working a working alternator, so I think its unlikely that's causing the problems.

Tev

I've got a spare Velleman ignition amplifier I built for my 1200 Beetle. It does away with the 2CV condenser and just uses the points to trigger a spark from the coil. The points carry virtually no current and can thus last for ages. If you'd like to try it PM me your address and I'll send it with fitting instructions. It really improved the starting, tickover and smoothness of my Bug.

I'd say it's the condensor, happend to me couple of times now, replaced all ingitionstuff with new goodies (VALEO) but after a week or so really bad running engine, not fireing, backfires e.t.c. cleaned the carb, couple of times, changed the coil couple of times (of course thinking it couldnt be the ignition!)
Then in the end opening the front again (Dyane) checking points, perfect, timing perfect, then changing condensor, problem solved!!!! happened last week again (with a Dyane of a friend of mine)

greetzzzzz
Rusty