The Lees wrote:
>Problem: Quits running for no apparent reason. It's as if I turned the
>ignition key off............................
>
>
John:
I don't know if this applies or not, but the symptom is pretty much the
same.
For about two years I fought a similar problem with my Tiger. It ran
great most of the time but once in a while, especially in hot weather,
the car would just "shut down", exactly as you describe. It didn't seem
related to turning a compnoent on or off, it would just suddenly decide
to shut down. It could be on the freeway at 70 mph, or tooling around
town at 30. It would just shut down. Usually, after 5-10 minutes, I
could start it up again and it would usually run with no problem until
the next time.
I run an Pertronix ignition. Discussing the issue with Pertronix, they
insisted that something was causing the voltage to drop to a level below
which the ignition wouldn't run. I'd test it, though, and I was getting
12-14 volts at the coil. Calling them again several times, they finally
suggested I test the voltage when the car was very hot. I did that and,
sure enough, voltage would hover around 9-10 volts at the coil, barely
enough to run the ignition. Pertronix said that any drop below 9-10
volts would cause exactly what I described.
With the car running, and hot, I traced all the wiring from the ignition
to the tach. When I touched the tach wire (that goes to the tach sensor
on the back of the tach), the wire was very hot. It turns out that I had
created the problem myself. When I replaced some of the wiring behind
the dash two years earlier, without thinking of it, I replaced it with a
smaller guage than the rest of the wiring. This created an electrical
"bottleneck/resistance", and when the car and the wiring got very hot,
it made the problem worse and caused the shut downs. I re-wired to the
tach with the proper size wiring about a year ago and have not had any
problems since, even in very hot weather.
When you replaced some of your wiring, could you have replaced it with a
smaller guage wire than the rest of the harness?
Steve Sage
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