merrytexan Loc: georgia

Good guess!

Sinewsworn Loc: Port Orchard, WA

Beautiful shot of a beautiful little car! I would need two-one for each foot! Thanx for sharing.

Abo

The Lucas fuel pump/ignition is/was not the problem...
the problem is American mechanics.

Anything they did not see in their apprenticeship/not made in the good ol' USA
is totally "foreign"... and that's the problem.

At 17 years old I bought my first car; a BMC Mini which had that Lucas
fuel pump and ignition system... as easy as pie to set up/service.
And once I'd set and serviced those systems, they were 100% reliable... 100%!!!
And zero electrical problems of any kind! Zero!

Having said that, the engine in the Mini is East/West and the distributor
faces forward right behind and close to the centre of the grill...
driving through water could get condensation on the inside of the dizzy
cap, causing misfires... which was very easily remedied by unclipping
the cap, giving it a squirt with WD40... LPS etc then a wipe out
with a rag... refit the dizzy cap... 2 minutes work and all was good.

And water in the dizzy cap will present the same problem with
Delco, Bosch, AC, FoMoCo, Mopar, Bendix... whatever... of that "ignition points" era.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

With all due respect to another accomplished wrench turner, I have to disagree. It reminds me of a British car salesman telling me “that you just need to tighten your sump bolts mate” when I was complaining about the myriad fluid leaks.

I grew up owning and working on British cars (had to - no money wile in school or the military). My first car was an Anglia, then a Cortina, a Sunbeam Alpine series II, followed by 2 bug eye Sprites, an 850 Mini, a TR Spitfire, TR4, MGA (with a B engine), a 1275 Mini and a Jaguar MKII. I’ve rebuilt easily a dozen British engines (we used to race Morgans in SCCA), Girling and Lockheed Brakes, Armstrong shocks, Autopulse electric pumps, Smith gauges, SUs (I still have my Unisyn), and Lacock de Normaville overdrives. And I can’t tell you the times I’ve been left on the road with failed Lucas generators, bad distributor caps, starters that wouldn’t start and melting wiring harnesses (the TR4 only had 2 fuses - one for each headlight - everything else was unfused). Lucas has earned their reputation fair and square, and it isn’t a good one, and I DO know how to work on British cars. I have owned a couple of Saabs and a Volvo, but the only American cars I’ve owned have been company supplied cars. I do ALL my own work when required including fuel injection.

The day I sold my TR4 to the service manager of the BMC dealership (he didn’t even make it home before the car died) and the Jag (which developed an electrical problem between the buyer’s test drive and the delivery) we’re the best days of my automotive life. I bought my first new car - a BMW 2002 off the showroom floor (rather than the TR6 I’d been considering) and never looked back. I went on to work with some pros who raced a 2002 in IMSA (I was the Weber tuner and ran the engine dyno and worked the flow bench). Went Japanese for awhile with a 280Z, then a pair of 911s before my first Lexus in 93 and my first Mercedes in 97. Now I never buy anything except Japanese and German.

I’ve only had 2 recent experiences with British cars. I helped a friend sell a Jag XJ-8 (he’d been either left on the road or spent a fortune at the shop too many times). It was a pristine car, and I almost bought it myself for a spare car until I saw the service records and the amount spent (almost 14K$ in 70K miles was just astronomical). One of my system engineers at Oracle was driving a new Aston Martin when I went to work there. Turned out his wife had won a 2 year lease in a sales contest. He said it had been picked up on a carrier and returned to the shop 8 times in the first year due to electrical problems. Not sure Aston still uses Lucas or not.

Don’t get me wrong - I love many British cars - I think the E-type is one of the most beautiful automobiles ever built, and there are 50+ years of Road and Tracks in my attic, but I’ve paid my dues, and when my 15 year old Merc and my 13 year old Lexus need replacing (neither of which leak anything), it will likely be another Lexus. I think Toyota is making some of the most reliable automobiles in the world. I love Mercedes, but with their CANbus electronics, they’re getting hard and expensive to work on when they do break, and at 75, reliability and quality has become key to me.

Cheers,
Chris

Abo

Please don't refer to me as an "accomplished wrench turner''.

Down here a "wrench" is a violent jerk
or a painful parting or uprooting.
In the immortal words of Ian Dury:
"It's a bit of a wrench, but think of the stench
I'm leavin' behiiiiiiiiiiiind!!!"

Again Chris; once I'd set and serviced those (Lucas) systems, they were 100% reliable... 100%!!!
And zero electrical problems of any kind! Zero!

I have worked on Lucas systems and afterwards there were no failures.
You have worked on Lucas systems and afterwards there were failures.
Easy enough to join those dots.

And Aston Martin ignition systems are made by FoMoCo... LOL

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BS. There is no magic that will make Lucas reliable, and many tens of thousands of British car lovers who do know how to work on them agree. It’s not a matter of a skilled repair, it’s a matter of poor design and shoddy quality. Any competent person can install points and service a distributor, but if the poorly made cap arcs or cracks because of slop in the distributor shaft bearings of a NEW distributor, then pretty hard to attribute that to service. Or if a regulator (which is non adjustable), or a generator which only typically has replaceable brushes and may need an occasional bearing lube, fails, that is hardly the mechanic’s fault assuming the belt is tightened to the correct spec. And how may tach gearboxes on the back of Lucas generators have you replaced? Have you ever seen one that actually worked for any length of time. How about those non fused circuits in the TR4? Is that poor maintenance or poor design? Do you know why the British wear driving gloves? So they can pull the burning, melting wiring harness from under the dash without burning their hands. Been ther done that. Nope, you’ve either been lucky, haven’t worked on enough British cars or haven’t kept them very long. Lucas’ reputation (prince of darkness) is WELL deserved and not the mechanic’s fault. I’ll put my mechanic’s skill and knowledge up against yours any day. Btw, I was a professional mechanical designer for 8 years, so I’m not an amateur at this.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Exactly what I expected from you. You can’t have a civil disagreement without name calling and if anyone disagrees, you can’t argue with facts, you just get angry. This will be the last time I waste time on you - consider yourself ignored.

Abo

And as for not "arguing" (as you would have it) with facts;

"once I'd set and serviced those (Lucas) systems, they were 100% reliable... 100%!!!
And zero electrical problems of any kind! Zero! is fact.

And as for getting myself "ignored"...
ignoring is what ignoramuses (like you) do.