Team MightyBoy

OK, I finally decided to pull my finger out and give my boy a long overdue service. Only problem though is that I cant find where the condensor is locted. I thought I'd be looking for a lil round thing attached to the dizzy, but unfortunately there's nothing there...
The only thing I found which _may_ be a contender is a small square-ish looking black plastic thing screwed to the coil. Only problem there is that it has 2 wires coming off it. - One to the '+' on the coil, and the other to some part of a nearby wiring loom.
If this is indeed the thing I need to replace, how do I connect the extra wire from the loom? (as the new condensor only has one wire coming off it).

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
fritz

Mate try looking at the back of the dizzy under the vacuum thingy and just above the outlet on the fuel pump there should be a little silver round cylinder there with a blue wire.Thats what i have on my f8b's

The black plastic device attached to the coil is not your condenser. I believe the condenser is located somewhere around never the vacuum advance diaphragm. Should certainly be attached to your dizzy somewhere, anyway!

Champ, your looking at your ballast resistor. All you need to do with your condensor is screw it to the body and the blue wire to the negative of your coil... Don't worry about your other condensor. Won't do any harm. It's just a Capacitor designed to eliminate high freq that your engine creates that messes with your spark timing. The more condensors the merryer!!!(don't go installing 100 though only need one or two)

Well, thanks for the info guys. Found it where you guys said it would be. It is certainly hidden from view very well, and getting the little sucker off proved to be a pain too. - had to take the dizzy out. ;-(

I dont have a timing light, so I am timing it by ear/feel this time. I presume by twisting the dizzy anti-clockwise I am bringing the timing closer to TDC? (retarting it?)

Turning the dizzy towards the firewall (anti-clockwise) will advance the engine, towards the radiator (clockwise) will retard it.

So basically I'm looking to advance it untill it starts to ping, and then retart it a little bit?

Not at idle, no. The timing advance will make the engine ping it's tits off at high revs if you have it that far advanced. Set it so that the engine runs sweetly, take it for a drive and if it's rough and pinging up the rev range progressively back it off until it smooths up and quietens down.

Well that's what I meant actually. I'm not even sure you can get it to ping at idle? Mine starts to run like it's on 1 cyl before it pings at idle I think.

I also have an issue with run-on at the moment. Even when the timing is set back quite far (and not pinging), it still runs on a tiny bit. Half sec or so. Any other possible causes?

Do people set the plug gap, or do you just lob in the recommended plug type without any mods?

With the cost of plugs these days, you're far better just buying the correct plug and slamming it in.

Josh
I always found that the 10 seconds per plug to check the gap was a good investment in time. (specially on NEW plugs)

You buy Bosch spark plugs, don't you.

With the points and condenser, are they shared with any other makes of vehicle? I'm talking about the F8 ones.

Tell me then, what is the best sort of plugs to be using?

I'd run with NGKs, of which you have 3 choies:


BP5ES
Standard Nickel Alloy spark plug. Service life of 20,000 to 40,000kms.

BP5E
V-Grooved Nickel Alloy spark plug. Improved ignitability due to sparking at periphery of the electrode. Service life of 20,000 to 40,000kms.

BPR5E-IX
Iridium-tipped spark plug. Extremely long service life of 160,000kms and even better ignitability due to small diameter centre electrode.