In my quest to trace engine bay noises I had thought that I had found one, in that the distributor sounded like a Spanish maraca. When I took it out and took a look the weights, and more importantly the springs, they seemed to be shot. They certainly don’t sit snug and taught as I thought they should. The lower spring in this photo deffinately looks loose to me ...
Being as there is also a little play in the shaft, I got a quote from the distributor doctor for a refurb which came out as a baseline of £195 + the dreaded VAT. Could be more expensive, dependant on what the dizzy needs.
Whilst I was pondering the situation a dizzy came up on eBay for £165 that looked to have had a rebuild and it had a NOS Lucas cap and rotor. Worth a punt, only trouble was that ther was a seized screw in the cap.
Said screw was duly removed with a little persuasion
Internals of the rebuilt dizzy look to be in better condition than my old one and there’s no play in the shaft at all.
I did need to swap the vacuum can over because the new one had a 45d4 can rather than the 44d4. Fitted to the car and timed up, it runs beautifully. Very happy with my eBay punt!
As the weather was fine last weekend I took the chance to take VYK for a spin down to Rye and visit Dale, who owns a rather lovely pageant blue Sprint. His is a beautifully original car which still wears its original paint. It was nice to meet another Sprint owner and chew the fat for a bit. You can just see the new period number plates that I have fitted too in the second photo. So much nicer than modern plates. IMHO of course.
VYK drove beautifully well and I enjoyed every minute of it. More miles, more smiles!