The summer came and went without issue, we had a few trips out the longest being a weekend away to Winchester and a visit to the Watercress Line and their 1940's weekend. No images of the car though - very disappointing from that perspective!
The old TR7 is now my main form of transport and is pressed into daily use, transporting me to and from work. So as we head into the winter I started to wonder about the robustness of the TR7, the car is 37 years old so bound to be issues. . . .
The first one: Ignition.
I had a problem with the car during the summer months after about 4-5 weeks from the start of the season service. The car started to misfire but as I had just serviced the car it took me a while to identify the problem being the points!
It seems that the plastic heal of the new points had worn resulting in my misfire. Being fed up of this, the third set in as many years, I decided we needed to go electronic. Having done this before I selected the electronic ignition kit from Powerspark
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| Powerspark Ignition Kit |
The hard bit is that to fit this kit on the AC Delco distributor you need to remove the distributor and dismantle it as the magnetic pickup fits beneath the bob weights requiring the main shaft to be removed. All good fun and again no image - totally failed! But here is image of the distributor at least.
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| AC Delco distributor in place |
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| Exploded view of distributor |
The second, cooling fan;
The other day on the way home there was a nasty vibration and grinding noise from up front. Having got home it was a fair guess that the viscous fan has decided to pack up and is grinding away at the pulley shaft. Looking at the replacement parts anew coupling is £72 + VAT and more importantly checking my TR7 manual you need a press to get the old one off and the new one on.
What to do then - convert to an electric fan sounded good to me but the price for that on the same site was £170 + VAT. This price just looked excessive to me so I decided to look to find a fan and a switch myself - which I did for a mere £40.
So I have removed the viscous coupling and fan pulley from the engine - the engine has a separate water pump so you can do that and got myself a smaller fan belt from local supplier RAE motor factors for a fiver.
New fan strapped to the radiator and temperature sensor install now and tested - very pleased with the result as the temperature guage sits nicely on the half way mark as previously.
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| Pulley, Coupling & Fan |
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| Electric Fan |
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| New Belt - No Pulley |
