A couple of services on customer cars this week along with a C4 swap out and intermittent fault. The work levels are coming back to manageable levels again now the majority of this year’s car shows have all but finished. A big fix and a minor fix, both which can leave the car going nowhere. One of the parts is one of the biggest a gearbox, the other is a no bigger than the tip of your thumb, an electronic ignition module.

Customer Cars

Convertible Gearbox

The transmission on the car had poor shifting and was basically worn. We made some diagnostics and confirmed the initial thoughts. We were given the go ahead to swap the the gearbox over. We took one from stock and started to remove the old box.

The new gearbox brought into the workshop and being lifted into place.

Random Cut Out

The cut out could be while driving, at idle or just not starting. Intermittent problems are always difficult to track down. The issue was reported as getting more common over time. The only way to get to the bottom of it is to try and replicate the customers last event. Things like how where they driving, speeds, hot or cold, even weather sometimes have an effect. While the car was with us it started fine. We took the car for a couple of runs and we eventually got what we were looking for on the third run; a complete cut out as if the ignition had been turned off. No warning, one second it was fine then nothing, it was dead. The car was pulled over to safe place in order to investigate under the hood.

There was power everywhere we were expecting it to be, but no ignition spark. There was no pre cut out coughing, spluttering or misfire, which would point to a fuel issue. There was fuel in the lines to the clear filter which was full, and the carb had fuel. We had pre-empted a couple of scenarios with us a few parts we use for trouble shooting, distributor cap, rotor arm, ignition coil, a couple of spare HT leads, remote starter, spare fuel, a length of rubber fuel line, in case of leak. All things we know to be working fine. We have some basic tools and some electrical diagnostic equipment.

We swapped the coil over and still nothing, the cap and rotor arm were also fine. We took out a spark plug earthed it and spun the car over no spark, we tried with a spare spark plug, same result there was no spark which pointed to some sort of electrical issue. Under the distributor cap was a Pertronix I electronic ignition set up. We checked the gap was correct by eye, which it was. We adjusted the gap smaller and then bigger just to be sure, again nothing as the car just turned over. We put everything back to defaults and refitted the spark plug (which was in good condition), suggesting the combustion was running fine before. We were about to call LAR recovery to come and pick the car up when we had one last try. This was about 10 minutes after a the initial cut out, the car fired up reluctantly. We quickly drove the car back to the yard and let the car cool down. The first job was to swap out the Pertronix module with a replacement like for like which we sell here. The car fired up straight away and was running stable. We repeated the initial test run, all was fine. Once we were comfortable we gave the car an enthusiastic hot run on dual carriageway, sitting in traffic conditions, hot starts, cold overnight starts, repeated short trips, everything was exactly as it should be. The problem was the Pertronix ignition module itself. A quick fifteen minute replacement and setup, but it took a couple of hours to trace and re-test after fitting. Since the car has gone back to the customer, he has reported the car hasn’t missed a beat since. If you have a Pertronix (which are usually very reliable), and you start to have a random cut out while driving check the module.

Our Cars

Yogi has been working on our much loved shop truck the ’65 Falcon Ranchero. The front fenders needed a couple of little patches to get rid of some thin rusty metal. Yes we have the full sheet metal but in this case the work was minimal and cost effective.

The old undercoat, what was left of it was removed so we get a good covering with the red oxide and underseal.

We then applied a couple of good coats of our very own underseal. We are not going concourse, as this is a used working truck for us. So protection from the elements is better than looking right.

the fenders were put back on the car being prepped ready for some paint.

There is still plenty to do yet, and we will bring you the progress as we go along.

Stay Safe & Take Care!