Service

D

DayleW

Member
Hello All,

As money has been tight recently, my other half forced me to get rid of one of my cars. After much thought as to whether to sell my P6 or my Mondeo, I have decided to keep my P6, and got rid of the Mondeo. The other half thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am, but i'm sure most of you here will understand my decision. So now my Rover 2000 SC is my everyday use car, and I have decided to spend some money from the sale of the Mondeo to give the P6 a good service.

I have a few issues I was hoping you good people could help me with. When driving at night, the headlights become very dim when the engine is idling, and power drops so low that the dashboard light and radio cut out altogether, the engine even stalls on occasion. I thought this could be points, or contacts, so I opened up the distributor and sure enough the contacts were a bit furred up. I cleaned them up with a bit of sandpaper and the car seems to be running more smoothly, however the dimness and lack of electrical remains. I am now thinking maybe it's idling speed or perhaps the alternator....

Also recently when I go to start the car, it sometimes takes a few turns of the key before it starts. I'm thinking maybe the alternator isnt charging the battery fully?

I was wondering it it's worth changing the points and contacts, coil etc, and if so should I upgrade to one of these electronic ignitions I have heard about but do not know much about.

Any thoughts?

Dayle
 
Hi - my everyday car is my p6 so that is possible :)

You could try raising the idle speed - turning a screw is much cheaper than buying parts!

The electronic ignition is a good idea but good to get everything else running right first i'd suggest!

Rich
 
Hi Dayle

It may be that the problems you are having are caused by poor/slow idling. At night the extra load of the lights will exacerbate the problem giving rise to some of the symptoms you describe.
I would get hold of a Haynes manual ( cheap on ebay ) and do a full service first, especially if it's been a while. Its cheap and straightforward.
You need to do the oil and filters then change the points, plugs and HT leads. Check the tappets, ignition timing and mixture. Its simple stuff and all covered in the manual.
As far as electronic ignition is concerned I would fit this once you have the engine running well with CB points as fitting them involves resetting the timing. Don't introduce any unknowns into the mix before you have sorted the problem with your car.

Pat
 
Thank you for the replys. At what rate should the 2000 SC be ticking over at and how do I check its actual speed?
 
Idle speed is 650RPM for your car but if there are problems its unlikely to idle smoothly at this speed. You can guess the speed or you'll need a tachometer to set it accurately.
I have one in the car on my 2200TC but they are not very accurate at low revs so its best to set with a tune-up type unit.

This might sound expensive but it's not; £10-£15 on ebay 2nd hand. You can get a tune-up type multimeter ( e.g. gunson brand ) which will do dwell angle ( for CB Points ) and tachometer.
A strobe light for timing and a colortune for setting the mixture and you have everything you'll need.

Even better if you can borrow off someone you know.
 
Most certainly sounds like a charging circuit fault, is it a generator or alternator you are using? if a generator it is possible that it maybe an idle problem coupled with a duff battery.
First port of call would be to see if the generator/ alternator is supplying the correct output voltage under load at the specified rpm, I dont know if Haynes would have that data or not but really this is the number 1 thing to do before looking elsewhere.

Graeme
 
Also recently when I go to start the car, it sometimes takes a few turns of the key before it starts
Click to expand...

If the problem was the battery/charging I think you would notice this when trying to start the car at night or during the day. But as Graeme says check the voltage on the battery terminals with the engine running. It should be about 13.7v
 
Hi All,

I have checked the voltage on the battery terminals while the engine was on tickover. It was only at 11.58 volts. I hooked out the timing strobe which was given to me by my Dad and I had not learnt to use until today. The minimum rpm setting on it seems to be 750RPM so i have tweeked the idle speed up to 750RPM as best I can tell. This has increased the voltage on the battery terminals to 12.50 V. Also my indicators now tick over properly at idle where before they wouldn't.

The voltage is still a lot lower than what pat180269 suggested. Ghce, I have an alternator. My car is a 1973 model.
 
An alternator doesn't start kicking out the full monty until the engine's doing about 1200 rpm. I'd say that sounds fine to me. My headlights are fractionally dimmer at tickover (about 750rpm) when I've got everything going on a wet night.

You're still in positive numbers. If the charge drops below 12v you're in trouble as your battery will be gradually losing charge as the headlights etc draw more out of it than the alternator puts back. Switch everything on (main beam, wipers, heater fan, the lot) and check the voltage with the engine speed at about 1500 rpm. If you're not getting close to 14v then, I'd start to think about bad connections/dicky alternator etc. But if you don't have any cold starting issues, I'd be inclined to say that's normal.

Michael
 
I was having starting issues. The headlights were going very dim on tickover to the extent I was not sure if they were even on. I'll have to have a drive about over the weekend to see if things have imporoved. I'll also check the voltage at 1500 rpm.
 
It is entirely possible that you have a faulty battery, at 750 rpm I would have expected your alternator to be putting out 14. something volts across the battery terminals when just running the engine ie no lights or fan blower on.
Normally an aged or failing battery will go high impeadance and wont have the ability to fast crank the engine on start but once started the battery volts will very quickly float to the alternator reg volts of 14.2 - to 14.5 HOWEVER some batteries can get shorted cells ie they might drop approx 2.0 volts in their output but they can still crank the car and arn't low impeadance ie they suck the full current from the alternator which presents it self as a low voltage when measured across the charging battery.
Not saying that this is necessarily your cars particular fault as it could just be a faulty alternator still.

Graeme
 
Check the voltage at 1500rpm as Michael says.

Then I would take the battery off and charge it overnight. See if there is an improvement.

If there is, then suspect a charging problem, else suspect the battery itself. You can get the battery load tested for free. If the battery was at fault I would have thought it wouldn't want to turn over the engine on these cold mornings.

Does the IGN light come on when the lights dim ? Also check the fan belt is adjusted correctly and is in good condition.

Pat
 
Yes, the ign light does come on when the lights dim. The fan belt seems tight to me. I'll investagate the voltages at 1500 RPM later. The battery doesn't like to turn the engine over on these cold mornings. I'll get it checked and let you know. :)
 
I took the car out today and after it had warmed up it sounded like it was idling far too fast. I rummaged around in my shed and found another gadget that was given to me - a Gunsons Testtune Diagnostic Multimeter. First I checked the idle speed at it was too high -around 1200 RPM so that was the speed at which I got the 12.5V reading across the battery terminals. So I reduced the tickover speed down to 650RPM, and it sounds very lumpy at that speed, and the ign light is on.

I then checked the dwell angle and that came out as being 8% and occasionally the meter was spiking up to about 50%. The multimeter book seems to suggest that all engines should have a dwell angle around 50%. Does this help me pinpoint my problem as being the points?
 
So according to the multimeter angle the calculation to convert from % to degrees should be: 8/100 * 90 = 7.2 degrees. So my points are way off? Have I done this right?
 
Hi, I've never done points myself but looking around tinterweb it seems somewhere around 40-50 degrees is normal for a 4 cylinder

Rich
 
(So the calculation cant be right!)

the angle should be in your workshop manual or haynes i believe. If you dont have one shout up and i'm sure somebody can check it for you!

Rich
 
I'm pretty sure i've got this right. I used the calculation in the multimeter manual. It's a 4 cylinder so the cam has 4 lobes spaced 90 degrees apart. The formula is dwell-in-percent/100 * period of cam. The reading on the multimeter set to position 2 for dwell angle readings is defenetly mostly between 8 and 10%, with the odd spike up to 50%. I've checked the points gap with a feeler gauge and that seems correct (0.015 inch), so i've ordered a new set of points. The old ones do seem a bit pitted.
 
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