Rough Running (& broken clutch)

Post by **Stig** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 7:58 am

I'm having to drive the Sprite at the moment after the Minor's clutch pedal went straight to the floor yesterday morning -fortunately close to home so I managed to drive it back without a clutch. But the Sprite is running really badly (it's not seen much use for a while), I had to clean up the points (and swap batteries with the Minor) to get it to start yesterday but it's symptoms are that it wants to stall when pulling away unless I use 2000 revs and it's really popping on the over-run.

What does 'the team' think then? timing retarded?

Post by **kennatt** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:22 am

popping on the overrun is the clue,reset the points,its easy to change the timing after a points clean.

Post by **bmcecosse** » Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:25 pm

And check there is some oil in the carb dampers, and the carb pistons are free to rise and fall! The clutch straight to floor will likely be the linkage having worn through the operating rod - quite easily fixed -even a bit of threaded rod can be used in the short term till you get (or make) a new rod.

Post by **Stig** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:03 am

Last time it was the weld breaking on the clutch pedal shaft, maybe my welding wasn't as good as it looked. I'll find out at the weekend, just hoping the weather improves.

Advanced the timing a bit on the Sprite and it's slightly better, having spent half the evening swapping alternators with the Minor - I suspect that 13V gives a better spark than 8-9V! Very stressful driving home in the dark with gradually dimming headlights and an engine that wants to stall in traffic!

Post by **glyna2006** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:01 pm

try setting the points and if you got a strobe light check timing.if no strobe try moving dizzy a bit either way see if engine increase's its revs bit of a job to set dead on with no strobe..glyn

Post by **Stig** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:22 am

Well I fixed the clutch linkage. The rod had snapped in the middle, a few minutes walk to the junction where it all went bang and there's the front couple of inches of rod still sitting there on the road.

I managed to thread a nut onto both sections and used that to join them by welding both ends to it - I wasn't going to trust one or two threads to hold it!
After swapping the working alternator back again I have a working Minor again.

Still not sure what's up with the Sprite, reset the points gap and static timing for now but it'll have to wait for a new alternator (it's not just the brushes, tried that).