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NonMember

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Posts posted by NonMember

  1. 2 hours ago, johny said:

    I havent heard of timing affecting starting

    If it's very advanced it can cause the engine to kick back and refuse to start. My Spitfire used to do that when the mechanical advance stuck on. It sounds like a flat battery / very slow crank. I wouldn't expect 14 degrees to be that bad but it will change the response somewhat.

  2. I'm with johny on this. The nylon pipe used on later big saloons is all very well if the routing is designed for it, but for a Herald you need pipe that can be bent to shape. Copper is easy to do (although I do use a proper pipe bender for the more dramatic bends).

    • Like 1
  3. Does it always do this after a week in the garage? Is it always the same cylinder? Something like johny's idea seems likely but I'd expect it either to move around the cylinders or only happen when it happened to stop with that valve open.

    Definitely try clive's idea of swapping the plugs - it may well be that the one in number 4 is a bit damp-sensitive and needs to be warmed up before it works.

  4. 24 minutes ago, Pettifordo said:

    does any one know where I can find out how high they need to be ?

    The tolerance band is pretty wide. I can't say I've ever had one fail on "too low", despite frequently thinking my main beams were dipped. I had one failed (once, many years ago) for aim too high, but that was a Vitesse inner and it was illuminating the tree tops.

    Find a nice level parking area with a wall. Park up about four car lengths from the wall, facing it. On dip, you should just be lighting up the bottom of the wall. On main, the centre of your beam should be at headlight height.

    • Like 3
  5. The 100V above earth (approximately) comes about with "double insulated" electrical equipment that has a two-pin or two-wire mains cable. Because this equipment has no connection to earth, and nearly always has an isolating transformer in it (which, in modern stuff like the CTEK, is probably a high frequency SMPS unit), the low voltage side floats, as Clive says. But, there is still a shared PCB between the mains input and the low voltage stuff, and PCB substrate is not a completely perfect insulator. The result is that, in the absence of any reference connection, it all floats towards the mid-point between the two mains wires. That mid-point is 120VAC, since the neutral wire is earthed at some point near your incoming supply.

    • Like 1
  6. 20 minutes ago, Paul H said:

    So far SIP 100 litre is behaving

    I have a SIP 50L twin cylinder. It's approaching 30 years old and has been dropped on its side in the past. One of the cylinder heads got cracked and had to be repaired (it's an obsolete model so no spares availability). It still works fine, even if it's a bit loud.

  7. 1 hour ago, Colin said:

    Not sure where the Headlights Earth is situated!

    I'm not familiar with the 1200 but on Vitesses and Spitfires the headlights have a black wire that goes to the bundle of bullet connectors in the nose cone, which connect to a black wire in the loom. The most common fault here is that one of those black wires isn't making proper contact in the bullet connector.

  8. 1 hour ago, Colin said:

    I'm not sure how I can test the stalk connection you refer to (Quote "Either way, my bet's on the wire from the dash switch to the column switch, which is separate from the wire that feeds (from the same dash switch terminal) the side lights"). Which wire do you mean?

    The column switch should be supplied through the dash one, otherwise the headlights will come on without the side lights when the dash switch is off. The wiring diagram in the official WSM shows this as a "NR" (brown with red trace) wire. For the 1200, it shows a red wire spliced off this mid-way, to feed the side lights.

    The brown/blue wire to the master light switch is the main power - direct from battery via the dynamo control box. The output of the master light switch should be brown/red. The stalk certainly should not have a brown/blue connection.

    1 hour ago, Colin said:

    Speedo Blue 'jewel' indicator that normally shows full beam on, is on for both Main and dip beam settings.

    If the wiring sounded anything like correct, I'd say that points to a grounding problem on the headlights. However, with all the wiring colours being wrong, the possibility that it's all just connected up bass-ackwards can't be ignored.

  9. You said it works on the bench but did you try all combinations? In particular, try powering the tail light pin while grounding the brake light one, as that's what it should be seeing in the condition where it doesn't work on the car.

  10. 18 minutes ago, cliff.b said:

    With the tail light on, it became slightly brighter when the bulb holder was grounded, but IF the circuit was through 2 other filaments I would assume it would be far dimmer.

    It's actually quite hard to see the difference made to a 5W bulb by the presence of two 21W bulbs in series. The 21W filaments don't get enough current to make them hot, so their resistance stays really low. So I think your observed behaviour is exactly as expected.

    However, this does leave a question over:

    1 hour ago, cliff.b said:

    when I connected the brake light wire it went out, although holder still grounded.

    My best guess for this is that the LED bulb you have is simply the wrong type. If you fit a "single filament" bulb in a stop/tail fitting, you normally get the front side lights coming on with the brakes, as well as the other stop/tail light being the same brightness as either stop or tail.

    Were you doing this test with the engine running? I wasted many hours chasing down a problem with my Vitesse's front side lights not working with the headlights on (but fine with them off) until I realised the battery was a bit low on charge and the LED bulbs just don't work below 9V.

  11. 1 hour ago, clive said:

    The threaded section on a non-od stick is 5/16 (I think from memory) and is a reduced diameter

    Indeed. I was actually rather confused as to where Peter found an OD-type gearstick without the hole.

    1 hour ago, clive said:

    for most cars tehcolumn switch is a better option.

    Completely agree. Especially on a round-tail Spitfire. I tolerate my GT6's gearknob one only because it's what the factory fitted.

  12. 33 minutes ago, Colin said:

    Do we have fuses?

    No, it's a Herald.

    33 minutes ago, Colin said:

    Too light a wire would surely blow a fuse under full load at some point??

    Why do you say that? A fuse will blow if a LOT of current flows. Too thin a wire gauge will not increase current! It may reduce it, if the wire gets hot.

  13. Brake lights, indicators and reverse lights are all powered from the "green" circuit (from ignition switch via the top? fuse)

    Sidelights and dashboard lights are fed off the master light switch through the middle fuse. Note that the fuse is after the switch, so will only be live when turned on. It's also the only thing connected to that terminal of the switch, so could be a loose wire there or a faulty switch.

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