Tomorrow is the big day.

It's a common bond men form from owning unreliable piles of s*it. ; )

Fraser

Yup, it mellows me out when I know there is always something to do on the car.

Heh. Done everything you planned today?

My plans were to wash all 3 and polish the Alfas. I managed this.

Then I replaced the steering column cowl on the 75 - old one was broken and I scored a replacement on ebay. Also replaced the plastic gearknob with a leather one.

What I failed to do was to replace the steering wheel - I gave it a good hammering with a mallet, but it didn't work. I need a puller.

I then updated the pics on the website with some taken this afternoon before sticking it under a fleecy lined waterproof car cover on the drive.

Cool, I'll have a look around; nice to have some new stuff to listen to on the Lytham run...

I'll drop a CD in the post tomorrow if I get chance ;)

Not exactly. A duff set of new leads caused mayhem for me. In the end, putting the old set back on caused it to run better than before, when the new set wouldn't fire at all.

Cheers

Did you try checking the resistance with a DVM? Normally about 5000 ohms a foot for carbon string types.

I didn't. Must buy one. But as it ran with the old, and not with the new, I went with leaving the old on, and I'm going to return the new.

If one of the new ones was shorting somewhere, would that kill the whole ignition process on all cylinders, or just the affected one?

You are Borat AICM5F hand parties with Pamela Anderson.

-- JackH

Yes you must. The SD1 *will* have electrical problems and the vast majority will be poor connections or dirty switches etc fixed for zero cost - provided you can fault find properly. They are a near essential item for any serious home mechanic.

I was thinking along the lines of poorly made terminations on the cables - so open circuit rather than short, as there's nothing in an HT cable to short to. Although rather unlikely on them all. You can get cross firing if you alter the layout of the cables, though - that's what the clip in cable guides are for.

I swapped the cables 1 by one making sure I didn't mix the order. When I swapped back, I did king lead first, then the first (drivers side) bank, then the passenger side bank. Each time trying it to see if it would fire. On the passenger side, tried different combinations of single leads, and with any three new, and 1 old, nothing fired. but all 4 old on that side and it sprang to life and ran fine.