Rev limiter

[Baggy2]

I dont know if you use your car for competition but I have always found for road use the rotor arms with built in rev limiters are more trouble than they are worth. They always will cause mis-fires sooner or later - mostly sooner so on the road I use the rev counter and change up a little earlier. Just my two penneth!
All the best
Baggy

[robertverhey]

I thought you just bent the tab out to the desired setting.....but how to calibrate? Trial and error I guess

[rgh0]

This is a LOTUS we are talking about right?

The factory probably fitted whatever was available and adjusted it to suit.

I agree they probably fitted what ever was available but disagree that they would have bothered to adjust it to suit

cheers
Rohan

[Robbie693]

Well I've bought a new, non limiting, rotor arm for diagnosis and guess what? Still a reluctance to rev much beyond 5500rpm.

I get a drop off of power and it refuses to pull any more beyond this, like it's choking up or something.

Can anyone help with this please? It's driving me crazy along with the stumbling/hesitation from low revs (see other post "Some progress")

Hopefully,

Robbie

[neilsjuke]

Try the condenser especially if it been replaced lately they don't make them like they use to.
If at fault the points will be pitted aswell.

Neil

[Robbie693]

Thanks Neil, I'll try new condensor and points.

The distributor is only 12 months/1000 miles old (43d4) do condensors fail after such a short time?

Cheers

Robbie

[69S4]

My experience of condenser failure has been that the contact faces in the points spark erode themselves over the course of a few minutes and with the resulting oxide acting as an insulator the car hardly runs at all. That's a worst case scenario though with total condenser failure. If the condenser is working but just the wrong value then you would get metal transfer from one contact to the other - the "pip" you frequently see. Which contact the pip is on depends on whether the condenser value is higher or lower than the ideal.

I've had a high speed misfire caused by a faulty (new) rotor arm but it was a typical electrical misfire - crashing and banging rather than just a reluctance to rev. Similar sort of effect with points bounce.

Have you checked whether the advance / retard mechanism is rotating freely? How about plug leads / caps? One of those breaking down at high revs and going onto three cylinders could give a reluctant feeling to the engine.

[Robbie693]

Thanks Stuart,

Advance looks ok, I had a quick check yesterday and I get around 25-28deg advance at about 3-3500 rpm (revs were a guess as I couldn't see the rev counter and had no helper). I checked the points gap and couldn't feel a pimple.

The leads and distributor cap are about the same age as the distributor - 12 months old or so. Plugs are about a month old and the coil was replaced two weeks ago.

Robbie

[neilsjuke]

Lucas parts have been copied by the far east and are poor keep your eyes out for new old stock not in the green boxes as far as condensers some historic race /rally cars are fitting the larger Bosch condensers on the outside of the distributor helps to keep them cooler as well , Also the Bosch rotor arms (non rev limter ) are better as they fit snug and have better insulation like the original Lucas items.
The fact you have pitting of the points would say to me the condenser may be at fault It not easy to test for faults down a PC ,
I like to bench/soak test igntion conponents before fitting.

Neil