Morris Minor Owners Club

Driving home tonight my baby went like the throttle cable had broken, then stopped completley. Checked for sparks- plenty, checked fuel feed to carb, same, even bunged a bit of petrol in the intake but still no firing ???

After turning over for a while had water dripping out the radiator overflow and when I removed the cap there were bubbles when turning it over !!! looks like head gasket but it wasn't overheated, didnt knock or missfire and i would still expect it to try and start even with a duff gasket.

Had to get the misses to tow me home in the end....now that was scarey as she didn't seem to understand I had the brakes of a bicycle and was only feet away from her AAAAARGH. You could smell the brake linings when we got home

So anyone got any ideas or other ways to check the head without having to remove it ?

BTW its a 56 series 2 with a 950 engine plonked in it

arrrrggghhh nightmare, so sorry to hear about that I've no words of wisdom, but keep us posted

wibble xx

Compression tester check all cylinders will be able to check in 10 min if head has gone<br><br>

Thanks for that, just checked and can get one in the morning from my local wilco store for £16.99. I will be waiting on there doorstep at 9.00 AM

Whats an average reading for a good engine ?

Manual gives 150 lb/sq in for a high compression engine, 130 for low compression, but the main thing you're looking for is a drastic difference ie one or more low readings.........

nigelr2000 if you dont wanna buy one see if you can pop round not far borrow mine if you want as long as comes back lol if the compresstion fine then get teh sniffer test on teh rad that will see if the exhaulst gos in to the water it dose sound like that to me not a big job tho head gaskit wilco do have them as well
had this before on my traveller and no on a omega as well
im in watton mate if need help at any time let me know see if i can help

Thanks for the offer but will be cheaper to buy one as my "other" car is a really thirsty peugeot 406 estate, it would cost more to drive to Watton and back than to buy one. My misses had an omega head gasket go and it cost her a grand t repair it !!!! ( it was quite new so worth it).

Oh and as a side note the peugeot failed its MOT this morning. Fitter pulled the handbrake to test it and snapped the cable so today is not my day. All I can drive now is my sons Citreon AX when he lets me

So got up early this morning, checked rad for oil and oil for water......found none ? took a plug out dry as a bone and nice colour, turned it over no spark ? take coil lead out of distributer and got a nice beefy spark ???????

Went to wilco's when they opened and suprised to find they had a rotor arm and dissy cap in stock. £7 odd later and it was running sweet as ever no bubbles in the radiator so no need for a head job.

Seems a bit weird that a cap/rotor arm can just fail without warning but Iam now a happy man again.

Well done! For future reference, you can do a quick check for catastrophic head gasket failure without a compression tester by turning it over on the starting handle (ignition off). It should feel hard to turn twice in each revolution.

Well done - nip out and buy a Lotto ticket because Luck is definitely on your side. At that price - consider carrying a spare cap and rotor! Would be interesting to swap back the old rotor and see if it runs ok - then swap the old cap in to test it. No real sense in this - just a learning excercise. Then throw away the offending item(s) !

Hope you have better luck than I did with the C.I (Quinton Hazell) coil I got from Wilco 2 months ago- it just burnt out today, the only electrical spare part I wasn't carrying at the time (2 months old so it won't fail, will it...). Nothing against Wilco, they are going to replace it without the little till receipt which I threw away, because...., but I wonder if the replacement will be any better?

Just make sure they don't give you a Mini coil - because it's designed to run at only 9 volts through a dropper resistance wire - and will only last about 2 months on your 14 volts !

From my experience, very recently, it will also cough/misfire/generally sound rough, and get HOT!! Yep, bin there!

failed rotor arms were common about 5 to 10 years ago. The plastic material was contaminated so could cause a current leak path to the dizzy shaft. After weeks or months this path would burn up but the burnt path was conductive, so the spark was lost.
This affected at least one batch of parts and caused probably hundreds of breakdowns

As BMC says make sure you get a non ballasted coil!

Also due to modern quality control (ie. cost cutting!) some coils dont have as much oil in them as they should. If you can mount it vertically (ie. the leads come out of the bottom)

If the car just dies like this it's usually related to the ignition process. I keep the used dizzie caps/rotor arms/points/condensors as spares in the car on the basis that A) they were working fine when they were changed and B) the AA man won't have any spares.

Aye - but only keep them if they are definitely working ok - don't remove a possibly dead item and throw it in the boot, and then hope to fit it 6 months later when the car lets you down on a dark and rainy night far from anywhere!

well im new tothis site so dont know much about moggys but sorry to hear about your car hope you get sorted mate