Going nowhere!

Today hasn't been a huge success.  I was put in a bad mood by queuing for ages to get money changed, after finding we needed our original receipt, which we'd left in the truck.  But that was just the start of it.

 

The truck hasn't started well for the last couple of mornings, which I put down to poor fuel.  This morning it was worse again, so I decided to investigate further.  That was 9 hours ago.  To cut a very long story short, the truck is only running on 4 cylinders, 2 from the left bank and 2 from the right.  The cylinders which aren't firing are 1, 4, 6 and 7, which are all 90 degrees apart in the firing order, which seems unlikely to be a coincidence.  But curiously, there is a strong spark to all 8 plugs, and fuel to both banks, so why the sparks & fuel aren't mixing to form an explosion in half the cylinders is a mystery.

 

Luckily for me, Roy has been helping with suggestions & pointers, and between us we've eliminated the spark plugs, ht leads, dizzy cap, rotor arm, coil and fuel system from our enquiries by swapping them out for spares.  We're moderately sure it's not the condenser, although I didn't bring a spare, so we had to find a similar one in a local mechanic's workshop – it could be that the new one is a duffer too, but they check out OK on the multimeter (about 1.3 microfarads, steady).  This leaves the electronic ignition.  It seems odd that it would give a spark at all if it's playing up – I'd have thought it would have either worked fine or not at all – but we're running short on ideas.  The thought is (thanks partly to Rog on the mobile) that maybe the dwell is too long, meaning the coil doesn't have time to catch up between each successive fire, leading to a weak or delayed spark to every other plug.  (The spark seems fine in strength, which only leaves the timing…)  The weakness in this theory is that it's always the same 4 plugs not firing, but it's our best guess.

 

Surprise surprise, the only spare part I didn't bring for the ignition system was the electronic ignition!  (On the basis that several people advised it never went wrong!)  The best plan we have now is to head back north towards Agadir, which isn't too far away, and which has lots of auto workshops.  Hopefully there we will be able to hook up the electronic ignition to an oscilloscope, so I can see what it's doing, and get either a replacement electronic ignition or maybe a points-based distributor as a replacement if necessary.

 

I wasn't expecting the truck to be problem-free during the trip, but as it's run perfectly since September in the UK with all the use it's had, it's just a little frustrating that we're having these problems already over here, and it's also galling that they're such odd-ball problems, given the time & effort that went into choosing spares etc.

 

Abby has just reminded me that it's our ten-year anniversary of getting together today.  Tonight we may have a romantic candle-lit dinner for four, as we're going to ask Roy and Jo if they want to eat out, as a thank-you for their help.  Jo even provided G&Ts at lunchtime, which made Abby's day!