Morris Minor Owners Club

my little moggy (Arthur is his name ) =) has an annoying habbit of running absolutley perfectly for ages and then 1 day i will be driving along and all of a sudden i would lose power and he will stop me in the middle of the road.. obviously me not being a mechaninc i phoned my dad (haha thats us women for ya) and we managed to find a broken wire in the distributer, which is now fixed he ran fine again for another couple of weeks and has now started to stop on me again, the wire is still fine so it must be another problem ... we cant figure it out can you??

any help would be much appreciated!!

hi Em and welcome to the forum

Are you a member of the MMOC? Your local branch is excellent and could perhaps find someone to come and see the car and work out what's wrong

Is the trouble still intermittent? and how exactly does it stop working? (noises, sudden/slow, power to other parts of the car, etc)

Wibble xx

im not a member as yet....
its very sudden it just slows right down, power to the other parts of the car is still there e.g lighs and wipers etc its just actual movement that stops!

When was the car last serviced?

just before its M.O.T in the begining of july.

Did they do the whole service kit, i.e plugs, points all those parts etc etc?

One thing that can cause Minors to stop is a faulty fuel pump which can be fixed by cleaning or replacing the points in the pump, or at the worst fitting a new pump.

Good advice to join your local club branch!

Yep, fuel pump's a common one as it tends to get ignored during servicing. If it dies again try thumping the fuel pump while the ignition is on and if it suddenly starts ticking away for a few seconds then that's the culprit. The fuel pump is the cylindrical thing to the right of the battery.

ooo i dont know if it was checked during the service but i will deffinatley try that if he dies on my way home from work tonight haha, saves me phoning my dad

thankyou for all ya help!!

If the fuel pump does stop ticking, a useful get-you-home thing is having an umbrella on the passenger seat. When the engine falters, take the brolly and thump the bulkhead underneath the glove compartment. Repeat as often as necessary.

Don't ask how I know this...

Thumping the fuel pump is not a permanent fix- its just a get you home measure.

haha an umbrella!! thanks.
i guessed it wasnt a permanent fix!
ta much

has the filter in the pump been cleaned recently. mine was blocked gave me all sorts of problems.as you look at the pump there is a nut underneath at the bottom of the pump.undo that remove the filter and clean in petrol then refit,easy.