Since I got it, BHX has always been slightly hesitant on the accelerator, particularly until fully warmed up. The engine has also always made a slight rough note on acceleration which I had thought might be pinking, but Mac's experienced ears disagreed. Anyway, it was essentially fine and idled really sweetly, so I did nothing much about it.
You might remember that last summer, the condenser failed and the points went bang. When the AA man tried to play around with it, he took the air filter off the carb and revved the car quite a bit; it sounded extremely rough, like a motorcycle engine. I've never heard it sound so awful!
Anyway, I replaced the points, condenser and coil at that time, and the car was working again, although it was not running as sweetly as it was before the bang incident. It still has hesitation on the throttle, it 'kangaroos' a little when doing a constant speed, and engine braking comes in too quickly when releasing the throttle. Incidentally, the points gap is correct. On acceleration, the engine sounds very rough (it has brand new oil - no change), and on idling in traffic it sounds just like a diesel, with a constant tick.
The other thing to note is that the timing was off, and Mac adjusted it to be correct when he was over last year. If anything, it has been much worse since that!
Yesterday, I took out a spark plug, which was very oily. The plugs were new last year as I recall.
I checked the water reservoir, and it has a very minor shimmer on the top, and is quite thick on my finger:
The oil filler cap has the tiniest bit of 'mayonnaise' on it, but nothing major:
I don't suspect full OMGHGF as the car still has plenty of power and there's no white smoke, but perhaps something else is leaking.
Anyway, I'd be grateful for ideas. I'd like to return it to running sweetly again.
