Thread: Fitting a snorkel with dual batteries in a V8

Originally Posted by bee utey

Just for a check run it with the vacuum advance disconnected. I have seen dissys that fire off the extreme end of the rotor button when on vac and there might be an adjustment issue in the pick up air gap. Grasping at straws but its easy to do.

Ok Mr bee utey. Just now I had a quick play with the timing. I upped it to 12d BTDC which is what I used to run it at and it still had the dramas I listed above. So on the way home (just around the block really) I pulled off the vac advance hose from the plenum and plugged the plenum outlet. Amazingly the car behaved itself all the way home. Drove as per normal.

So I'd appreciate it if you could enlighten me with your adjustment procedure

Well after reading this in another thread and realising that it is my exact issue I went and fixed it in 5 minutes.

Originally Posted by bee utey

What happens if you get the polarity of the two wires reversed? Then the amplifier will trigger (roughly, from the falling pulse) and your ignition timing will be out by a large amount, if it runs at all. When connected the right way around, the timing should occur near where the magnetic pick-up meets the star rotor on the distributor shaft. The air gap here is critical, it should be adjusted to the smallest gap allowing free rotation, otherwise low speed operation might be somewhat erratic.

Yes I had reversed the two distributor wires on the ign amp when I refitted it to its new spot. Then to make matters worse I retimed the car to suit the dodgy ign amp signal.

All sorted now. Thanks mr bee utey.

No worries! You found my other post, that's good because I had a day off from the computer and got some quality treadly riding in.

I looked the thread up just in case the info was in there and it was. I felt pretty stupid at having transposed the two wires but also pretty happy that it was such an easy fix. I've previously remotely mounted the amp that was on the distributor so the wires are connected using crimp terminals and easily swapped over.
I've never marked them as one way around it will start and the other way it won't so it was bad luck this time that it actually started the wrong way around.

I still haven't refitted the LPG or washer bottle. I've got all the places mapped out but I don't drive it much at the moment so haven't worried about it. But I'll get there..........