concor

Here's the thing. My car is running a bit rough. It's an '84 dual distributor. If I pull the coil wire L from it's L distributor cap it runs smooth. But if I pull coil wire R it runs rough, going slightly faster and slower, shaking a bit too.

Now these coils are a pain to remove, especially the right one. To test the coils, could I just leave the coils were they are and put the wire that leads to coil L on distributor cap R?

davek9

It would not hurt anything to try, just don't leave one disconnected.

Manfred

I just finished changing both coils, both coil grounds, both coil wires, caps and rotors on my car and it really wasn't bad at all. I little bit of a tight fit here and there but I have pretty big hands and limited tools so I figure if I managed then just about anyone can do it. Not sure about the difference in accessibility of the coils btw your car and mine though (I have '91GT). I did disconnect the remote battery jumping post (if that's the real name) on the passenger side from it's mount (two little screws) to give me more room to work. I did not have to take off the crossbar or anything else. The large water hose from the radiator to the engine (not sure of the proper name for it) is more flexible and moveable than you might think from looking at it so you can work around it. If you replace the coils make sure you use original Bosch coils; aftermarket coils can fry your LH (so I was told by other Rennlisters when I replaced mine).

John Speake

Why do you suspect the coil ? It could be a problem with the distributor or one of the plug leads connected to the "L" side

concor

Hi John, someone else had a similar problem as I and he exchanged the coil. I will exchange the coils the hard way then. I already checked in the dark for sparks and nothing shows up. I replaced the distributor caps and rotors with new ones about 2 months ago.

So on my 2do list is:
- exchange coils
- exchange coil wires
- check wire resistances
- check spark plugs
- check sparks

Mrmerlin

before swapping any parts remove both of the caps and put the engine at TDC make sure both of the rotors point to their respective hash marks on the dist body its a good chance that the slave dist has jumped timing so a new belt for the distributor may be in order.
Also note that one distributor is for one coil and that though you can swap the coils the correct distributor must be connected to the correct side otherwise the engine wont run

John Speake

Ah ! OK.....

Suggest you check particularly the king leads from each coil to distributor, especially RHS as water seems to get into the end of the coil and rot the connection.

Also carefully check the grounds for the two ignition output amplifiers.

concor

FIXED!!!

It's working again. I exchanged the coils with each other and it works fine again. Kind of strange though as the right coil was **** on the left distributor cap. Before when I started on the left distributor cap it ran on 3 cylinders and very rough. There was a washer tough that was too big on the plus pole of the right coil and that was sparking after I exchanged the coils. I suspect that washer was sparking before too, but I did not hear or see it before. So I think the big washer was the culprit. Probably in combination with some dirt on the coil. Funny that such a little thing can totally StrekStrekStrekStrek up your car (grr).

Ah well, I'm relieved! I was afraid all my ignition wires were toast and they cost about 200 euro to replace and take a month to arrive. In two weeks I have a classic tour and a Porsche tour with 150 Porsches taking ill kids along.

By the way, there was white powder (corrosion) on one of the ends of the ignition wire after I screwed off the plugs from the wire. That wasn't causing the problem though as it was still there right after.

SQLGuy

I wonder if your left distributor wasn't too far advanced in timing and causing pre-ignition. Seems odd otherwise that the car would run better with it disconnected. Could any of the work you did in swapping the coils have made up for such a timing issue?

Mrmerlin

did you check the timing of the distributors??

concor

The car went bad again, so I checked the wires:
1 infinite -> loose wire on distributor end -> now 3.30 kOhm
2 3.30 kOhm
3 3.19 kOhm
4 3.11 kOhm
5 infinite -> bad spark plug connector
6 5.60 kOhm -> bad spark plug connector
7 3.26 kOhm
8 3.13 kOhm

So, I just emailed some companies in holland to get me two new spark plug connectors. BERU ZLE 263 aka BERU BEO 6/3. I think this is my problem and I'm really hopeful everything will be good after I change this! I am putting in new spark plugs too while I'm in there.

@MrMerlin: Yep, checked the electronic distributors, looked good. I changed the belt in there a couple months ago too, so I didn't really expect anything there.

concor

FIXED!

I exchanged the spark plug connectors, got them at the porsche distributor for about 15 euro each. The car is running pretty good now. No more shaking or loss of power between 2000 and 3000 rpm. Idle is still slightly rough and too low at 500rpm, but that's a problem for another time. The big problem is solved, I did three test drives. Long live the cheap *** repair!

It's time for touring with the MG classics this Sunday!