Stalling

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Discussion

Sprite2

Original Poster:

14 posts

243 months

Wednesday 23rd November 2005
quotequote all
My girlfriend's 1275 L reg Mini Sprite (one of the llast carb'ed cars) has started stalling at idle when warm. Even stopping to reverse it will stall.

It has had a recent ignition service, the plugs look fine and I've topped up the carb damper oil.

Any thoughts what it might be?

Out of interest, what is the vacuum device screwed into the thermostat housing? It has two vacuum connections, the lower one of these goes off to the vacuum unit on the dizzy, the upper one has a T-piece with pipes going to the carb and disappearing into the nearside inner wing. I guess it adjust the amount of vacuum advance with temperature but can someone elaborate?

Cooperman

4,428 posts

257 months

Thursday 24th November 2005
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Could be lots of things. It could be a sticking dashpot piston which 'hangs up' when you stop and allows the engine to become too rich a mixture suddenly until the piston finally drops. Just take the piston out and polish the inside of the dashpot sides with very fine metal polish. Use a thin dashpot oil as well, especially at this time of year.
With all the pipes to and from the carb/dizzy, etc, on those later cars there is always the possibility of a leak in the system allowing some air in. On a 1990 Cooper I had I just removed all those pipes and blanked off the holes, then fitted an Aldon Igniter distributor, which doesn't have any vacuum connection, and it really worked fine.

cone

471 posts

242 months

Thursday 24th November 2005
quotequote all
the vac pipes on the stat were introduced by rover to give xtra advance whilst cold so that the cat heated up sooner thus been more efficient, they go under the wing to a charcoal canister linked in for an evaporative loss system.
sometimes its best to bypass it , remember that you can remove the cat on your car as its a carb model and has to be tested as a non- cat version, gotto be worth 3bhp!.
Cone.

Sprite2

Original Poster:

14 posts

243 months

Monday 28th November 2005
quotequote all
Checked everything over and it all looked fine except the oil in the carb damper was a little low and I figured this would affect the damping at tickover so I topped it up and the car is fine now.

Cheers for your help.