Thanks to all of you who came back to me on the misfire problem. The
emails came back amazingly quickly with some very good suggestions.
Diagnosing a car problem at web's length is pretty impressive. Thanks to
all of you who have taken the time to consider this one.
Just to feed back, I thought I'd summarise the suggested causes so far
in order of ease/ cost to fix:
1 Fuel tank breather blocked: test by running with the lid
open. (an easy one to do, probably cheap to fix)
2 Fuel vapourisation, probably caused by a lack of heat shield.
A little money plus a couple of hours work could fix this. (It's true
this Mk 3 hasn't seen a heat shield in at least 15 years, then again the
problem is only a few years old & getting worse)
3 Carb floats sticking: check for dimples on the float levers.
4 Low fuel pressure, test by gauge: repair by removing blockage
or changing the pump?
5 Coil failing when it gets hot
6 Poor tuning: get an OLD specialist to look at the
carburetion, timing etc. (good idea, if at a moderate cost. Many of my
car problems are caused by finger trouble.)
7 Incompatible head causing compression problems: 1500 on 1300
block (more expensive to fix)
8 Bore wear/ poor compression (serious money)
I'll try the easy ones first, starting with the top 3, but I'd be
interested in any other suggestions.
Dave Smith
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