Getting electricuted by the plug leads!

[Stavros]

Elo lads.

At a recent drift day i noticed that after the my 360 got a bit hot i had a missfire under about 3.5k, tho above was fine, its still not the best on a car that seems to peak about 4k, lol

When fiddling about under the bonnet with the engine running i noticed that i was getting shocks from the plug leads and the main coil to dizzy wire, so i guess they are shot to hell and not insulating right, right?

If they that bad id not be suprised if the plugs n dizzycap n rotor arm are all shagged too, so best get new ones of them too i guess!

I take it all ive said is correct and sensible? lol

[Stavros]

Oh dandy, its doing it constantly now, stinks of fuel, presumably as its barely igniting the stuff...

[SteveP]

Sounds about right.... How you finding the '60 anyway? GSF can be good for the rest of the ignition stuff, but they couldnt get leads for me. In the end I went to the dealer, but the kit they provide doesnt include the king lead to the Renix.

[pettaw]

And unfortunately Volvo don't do the king lead to Renix coil anymore.

Halfords still stock them though. IIRC, as part of the kit for the 360.

[SteveP]

Yeah but Halfords list two different types in their catalogue for the 360, one for the SAE Distributor and one for the DIN Distributor, and the model year is 1982-1989 for both - makes no sense to me...

[Chris_C]

Have a dig about, I didn't realise about that king lead, but I saw a company a while ago who did custom leads... was cheap too. Don't think it was Demon, I'll have a think, see if I can remember!

[pettaw]

You have to look at the pictures, I can't remember which one's the correct one, but I know I managed to find it last time

BTW sometimes even good leads will give you a shock touching them, particularly if they're wet, but you're much more likely to get it with old ones.

[foggyjames]

I'm guessing the king lead shortage is a recent thing, since I bought a new one almost exactly a year ago.

Any decent spiral wound plug wire should be ok. You can get kits to DIY build them to fit, as well as many companies doing off the shelf kits - Magnecor, etc. Do we think we can get the OE (Bougicord) wires from elsewhere? Ryan got ones for his 740 from GSF.

cheers

James

[Stavros]

well these are most likely the originals, and stone dry, thats for sure.

im guessing the dizzy cap n rotor arm are shagged too.

do 340s or (more likely) 740s share any bits like leads? as there always plenty of them in my local breakers, as would be good to NOT spend the value of the car while fixing the car, lol.

how much cash would i be looking at from halfords for a set of leads inc the king lead, and plugs, dizzycap, rotor arm?

and how am i getting on wit the 360? barring the missfire and starter issues, its great really!
obv 99% of its use is a drift car while i get my proper drift car finished, but its a good runaround too.

the suspension is comedy soft, but doesnt really spoil things, the main thing is as long as you drive it right it doesnt understeer on the limit much, which is suprising for a standard RWD car, esp a non-sports one.

IMO its a great drift car on the whole, wll, rubbish for most people as theyd just do the normal too fast and too much throttle, but that would ether do next to nothing, or understeer, but do it right and it seems to do pretty well for what it is.
Lot of potential anyhow, thats for sure.

Very hard work with the open diff tho, not hard to get it out, but hard to hold the drift for long as one wheel always tries to regain traction, its possible, but need to work silly hard, which gets a bit dangerous if we talking on the road.

Ive got the diff welded now though and now its way more controllable, and not made it understeer noticably more, which can sometimes be a problem.

Badly needs a bucket n harness, as the seats are not suprisingly so unsupportive i was holding my self in with one hand when doing faster stuff, but i have a spare kevlar bucket seat n harness ill fit.

Its got a few more battle scars now, 2 more dents on the rear quarter, front lip bent back a bit, and ive gone thru 5 rear tyres in about 2weeks, but that was the plan from the start.

Its got 1.5month MOT on it, if it will get thru another without much work im keeping it and sorting the suspension etc, if it fails badly ill look for another, but im deffo sticking around the 360s, i like the way they drive...

[foggyjames]

240s will have the same leads bar the king lead (can't remember the gender at the coil, but it's probably wrong. 700s (apart from very early 760 Turbos) had the head-mount dizzy. I wouldn't buy used anyway, unless they look really new. I spend the value of my 340 every time I fill the tank, so where do you draw the line? Halfords caps/arms are notoriously shite for B14s, but I don't know about B200s. The genuine Bosch items can be had for about half the dealer price direct from a Bosch agent. I even have the part numbers buried somewhere, but the agent will be able to get them.

On the 'dings'...If you're battering it, try to pick a scruffy one A couple of very nice cars have been wrecked by drifters....I've got nothing against drifting (far from it!), but if you're planning to be rough with them, leave the nice cars for the concours crowd, and pick on one of the 95% of slightly struffy motors. Kinda the irony of Motorsport. How many rally cars now worth tens of thousands have been stacked over the years? Not that I'd compare a 300 to an RS200 or anything

cheers

James

[Stavros]

I bought this car for 100 pounds, it smells like damp old man, it starts when it wants to, it has a serious missfire, had 2 dents already when i bought it, one on the roof and one on the side, both from previous OAP famer owner putting it into a ditch in the ice.

Shall I enter the car in concours?

[Carl]

I bought a dizzy cap and rotor arm for the GLT from Halfords recently. Definately runs better, but whether they're as good as OEM ones I couldn't say. It was under a tenner for them.

And they do sell the king lead too (£5.99 IIRC), but my local one's didn't have it in stock. I nabbed one from Pete in the end, not ideal, but it's much better than my old one for now Luckily I already had a new set of plug leads. A set of plugs from there are generally about £12 a set.

[Stavros]

That sorta moneys ok i guess.

How much you think a set of leads will sting me for?

How will i know which king lead (as there 2 it seems?) is the right one? They got pics at Halfrauds these days?

[foggyjames]

The 'other' king lead is probably for a pre-Renix car with a conventional coil. The one you want will be female, to fit the 'stump' (ooh err) on the Renix unit.

If your car is a bit scruffy, then fine. I think the drift cars are great fun (if a bit one-horse-trick for me), and it's good to see cars being used which would otherwise just be crushed. Concours isn't really my thing either (how I won the VOC thing I'll never know...guess they liked the 'originality' of the factory twin '40 setup), but I don't like to see the relatively few cars which are still in that kinda condition get screwed up.

We had a couple of cars (one in particular) bought by people who had obviously come from more expensive metal, got a good deal on one of the nicest cars you'll find (late model, zero rust, etc), but still thought (because it was sub £500) it was a worthless piece of junk, and proceeded to do an impressive job of bollocking it up.

cheers

James

[Chris_C]

Take the old one off in the car park and get them to open the boxes! Even Halford can cope with a Little Britain stylee "want that one"

Box o' leads there is about £15 (well, 1.4 and 1.7 are), I usually get plugs there too, seem cheap for NGK's.