If you've got spark at al;l four plugs and fuel then the thing to do now is
to confirm the timing.
Remove No. 1 plug, put your thumb over the hole and turn the engine in its
proper direction (when standing at the front of the car looking back at the
engine, the pulleys turn clockwise) until the pressure in the cylinder blows
your thumb off. Keep turning until the piston is at the top of its
movement. This is quite hard to judge as the movement is very little at
each end of the stroke, you can make two marks on the crankshaft pulley -
one where the piston appears to stop moving on its up-stroke, and another
where it appears to start moving again on its down-stroke. Use the TDC
pointer on the front cover to show where to make the mark, the TDC pointer
is the last one a point on the pulley passes, the others are all BTDC. The
TDC notch on the pulley should be in the middle your two marks. If it is
not then your crankshaft pulley has probably begun to delaminate which will
make timing difficult, make a new TDC mark between your two other marks.
Now look at the postion of the rotor arm, it should be at about 2 o'clock.
If it pointing elsewhere then someone has replaced it incorrectly, have a
look at the web site below (select 'Spanners', 'Ignition' and scroll down to
'DISTRIBUTOR DRIVE GEAR POSITION from John Twist') for how to correct it.
Wherever the rotor is pointing, that is No. 1 cylinder. The plug leads are
numbered from here 1342 anti-clockwise.
PaulH.
----- Original Message -----
From: Craig D. Niederst <niederst@telerama.com>
To: MG List <mgs@autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 11:13 PM
Subject: '71 B, still no start
> Well, still cannot get the B started. I thought before that It may have
been
> something in the distributor (only had spark at #2), but after a little
> cleaning I now have spark at all cylinders. One thing I did notice about
the
> distributor is that the lower of the 2 clips that hold the cap on is gone
> (thus why there was a wire tie holding the assembly together put there by
> the DPO). Any way to fix this (without buying a whole new distributor)? I
> have already verified that I get fuel to the carbs. I am currently at a
loss
> on why the car will not turn over. It cranks fine, just will not start,
> sputter, etc. I was thinking that the carbs could possibly be dirty and
> blocked from old gas, etc. I did pull the fuel line from the carbs and
> allowed the fuel pump to pump about 1 liter of gas out of the system
before
> trying to start the car. The first few squirts were a bit dirty, but it
was
> clean after that. But who knows if the DPO tried to start the car and may
> have let some of the dirty gas into the carbs. When I pulled the plugs
after
> a little cranking, they all did smell of gas (so it looks like gas is
> getting to the combustion chambers). Any ideas on where to look next? TIA.
>
> Craig
> '71 B (still in the street and covered in snow)
>
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