Morris Minor Owners Club

bmc ,you said to throw away the manual for timing adjustment and advance till it pinks.How would you do this , would you adjust it / drive it / adjust it / drive it till you get the pinking and then retard a tad or would this be done in the garage stationary ?? stupid question but not quite sure of the procedure
ronnie

Hello Ronnie,

you need to drive it on the road, the engine needs to be pulling hard at a slowish speed in high gear for it to pink. Pinking is a light rattling noise, you'll know it when you hear it.

Alec

Exactly - just a little bit at a time - don't overdo it! Someone on the Mini forum advanced it so much they had detonation and blew the head gasket.........

cheers guys , just what i thought will have a go later

Find a suitable test hill.

Before you start - make sure the vacuum advance and the mechanical advance are working as they should...... Otherwise it's all a waste of time.

im going to strip the distributor down and clean and lub it ,, anything i should be watching out for ??

Don't lose the springs!

are new springs available in case the old ones are weak

Hello Ronnie,

yes they are but there are very many types as the strength affects the curve of the distributor. You should see that the ones in your distributor are different, a light one which is tight and a stronger one which is loose.

Alec

thsnks alex

Although there is good reason to set the timing as BMC suggests, a strobe timing light has it's uses. Once you've got the timing where you like it (by doing the uphill running test) you can make a note of that -- or just mark it on the timing chain cover. That way, after doing a tune-up, you can reset that timing to the ideal position using a timing light.

Additionally, you can use a timing light to check the function of the advance(s), both mechanical and vacuum. By watching (the index mark on the pulley and a mark on the timing chain cover) while you rev the engine, you can see a nice smooth advance from the mechanical and a faster, and a more sudden advance from vacuum.

I couldn't find an index mark of my engine to save my life, so I just set the engine to TDC and made my own.

thanks for all the info , invalueable