Venerable19
Active Member
The Venerable 19 cut out the other day driving home from Fleet, one minute perfect, next minute total engine failure.
Engine turned over fine, petrol coming through but no spark. Had to leave the car. Came back next day with a spare disti cap, HT lead.
HT lead made no difference, but after swapping the disti cap it fired up! Great, fixed I thought. Drove it home. Next day put the air pipes back on, tightened the disti and voila it wouldn't start again.
Weird. Replaced the rotor and also the transformer part of the ignition module (yeah I had an old one), and it started again. I really wasn't trusting this. Checked the voltages into the ignition unit.
It was all good, 12v going to the transformer, good earth etc.
Read up some more and started suspecting the position sensor, checked the impedance - 250ohm - all good. Took it off and cleaned it up, looked ok, still magnetised, but, again, I had the old (working) one I'd taken off a couple of years back so I put that on (incl lead). Car fired up first time, great, must have been the sensor. Drove it a couple of miles to my local factor to order up a new sensor, on the way back stopped at Sainsburys.
Came out, wouldn't start - aarrggh..!
So to be clear the following have all been replaced:-
Disti cap
Disti rotor
HT lead
Transformer part of Ignition unit
Engine/position sensor (incl lead)
So that leaves the Ignition unit itself as the only bit that has not been replaced. Could the ignition unit fail in such a flakey way? I assume it takes the sensor input and uses it to switch the 12v input off and on to
generate the HT spark voltage, it just feels like it should either fail completely or else work - not work intermittently like this. Its a Bendix RE252 which I can't find on ebay, so I'll have to trawl the breakers. I've seen
ones that look very similar used on Volvos (different RE number) - would those work?
Any input much appreciated as ever.
(1991 Hatch 1390cc (E6J) , Manual, petrol)
Engine turned over fine, petrol coming through but no spark. Had to leave the car. Came back next day with a spare disti cap, HT lead.
HT lead made no difference, but after swapping the disti cap it fired up! Great, fixed I thought. Drove it home. Next day put the air pipes back on, tightened the disti and voila it wouldn't start again.
Weird. Replaced the rotor and also the transformer part of the ignition module (yeah I had an old one), and it started again. I really wasn't trusting this. Checked the voltages into the ignition unit.
It was all good, 12v going to the transformer, good earth etc.
Read up some more and started suspecting the position sensor, checked the impedance - 250ohm - all good. Took it off and cleaned it up, looked ok, still magnetised, but, again, I had the old (working) one I'd taken off a couple of years back so I put that on (incl lead). Car fired up first time, great, must have been the sensor. Drove it a couple of miles to my local factor to order up a new sensor, on the way back stopped at Sainsburys.
Came out, wouldn't start - aarrggh..!
So to be clear the following have all been replaced:-
Disti cap
Disti rotor
HT lead
Transformer part of Ignition unit
Engine/position sensor (incl lead)
So that leaves the Ignition unit itself as the only bit that has not been replaced. Could the ignition unit fail in such a flakey way? I assume it takes the sensor input and uses it to switch the 12v input off and on to
generate the HT spark voltage, it just feels like it should either fail completely or else work - not work intermittently like this. Its a Bendix RE252 which I can't find on ebay, so I'll have to trawl the breakers. I've seen
ones that look very similar used on Volvos (different RE number) - would those work?
Any input much appreciated as ever.
(1991 Hatch 1390cc (E6J) , Manual, petrol)
