Breathers and electronic ignition!
ok so my ( Vs) car has the Vellerman electronic gizmo fitted. It all worked fine all the way to Salbris and back, never missed a beat in the long queue or the holding field. But last year, just as the road salting started, it wasn't running so good but the car got put in the garage for the winter anyway. It came back out in Feb as the salt risk had gone and car ran a bit crap - an hour or so sorting out a carb jet saw it back on the go again for a few days untill we had warm days and frosty nights. The car increasingly became a pig to start cold so just assumed that the condensation or the Harley black coil had done its thing and cooked the Vellerman, re fitted the condenser and off it went faultlessly again.
Yesterday local man popped in to say the D*lly wont start again only firing on one cylinder and poor cold starting . I automatically assumed that the vellerman was to blame as it had the same characteristics to my problem. Fitted a condenser and re did the points found that the points box was really wet, not just oily but cloudy emulsion too. it couldn't be the rings because compression was good you could tell from turning it over by hand, so breather must be at fault. MrC also pointed out that there was always a lot of "crap" in the oil filler lid so popped the after market breather on the bench.
Its the steel bodied tower replacement breather with the reed valve in the lid - when taken apart to investigate i thought id find the a rough edge stopping the valve , but it was worse. Mild steel body, carbon steel reed, stainless keeper and BZP screw. Now all this should be an oil soaked mess but instead, because its a car that goes on short journeys between long stops in a barn there had been a fair bit of condensation and with all the differing potential in that valve the reed had corroded badly to the point it was holed.
DSC00346 by
Sean602, on Flickr
This resulted in the engine breathing through the points box with the usual tel tale oily interior of the points box, but added to this the way the points assisted ignition works it also caused the poor starting odd timing and one sided running. The points on these set ups don't really pass any current, the electronics use a very small current to sense when the points open and with all the condensation the unit was getting a false signal. When fitted to my car the ignition was perfect, MrCs car went through condensers at an alarming rate again the oily points box seems to be the death of condensers too as they never seem to last long once oil soaks in through the rubber or plastic blanking.
Hooked the faulty Vellerman back on to the orange one and it too runs fine so i can only assume that there was some moisture left in my points box after its short lay up. My breather is fine and the points box as clean and drt as the day id put it together last year.
So its time to sacrifice a feeler gauge for a new reed valve and maybee MrC will have the confidence to actually get out and get some miles on that car
One thing mind: When the reniflard fails to close isn't the air filter that gets the breathing and becomes oily?
