Saving Old Seagulls

All gone back to techno fantasy land ..everybody happy

" The reason the misfire stops is that in order to fire the mixture you must have some combustable mixture in the plug gap to be ignited "


Are you being serious

Andy.

and this

No purpose is served by having a pop at people on here. Let's keep it friendly.

This discussion is an interesting one, and there are as many theories about why various tricks and dodges work with Seagulls as there are theories about this last weeks' global financial roller coaster.

Much of the theory about increasing the plug gap makes a lot of sense; it only remains to discover why for earlier Villiers ignition systems in 102s and Little Model Fortiues the standard procedure back at the factory was to decrease the plug gap as well as the points to maybe 12 thou...

I'm sure , being a learned person you will have heard of the term "pre-ignition " , which occured particularly in older cars.
I remember having Mark 1 Ford Cortinas , and they would run for upwards of a minute after switching them off.
Perhaps you could explain to us all ................ a petrol engine running with no spark.
Early industrial twostroke engines would also behave in this manner.

Andy.

more technically accurate explanation gone ..

With some older cars running on after turning of the ignition was off, they started to put a selanoid on the carb to turn the fuel off and stop this.

I have an early 70's transit van that runs on unleaded. Had huge problem with run on and the only way to stop it was to stall it. Changed to more expensive high octane fuel and have never had a problem since.

Hugo

gone

Er...whoops wrong thread .....but still....

hmmmm..... a very arcane discussion ...and I find myself reflecting Charles P's comments

all I know is that the drill technique works ...and very grateful I am that it does

struggling with a wartime SD basket case, bent, bolloxed, buggered, abused and basically f**ked ...the joy of spinning up a lifeless magneto on the drill and getting a truly magnificent crackly spark ....well, just about all I needed

a huge smile, knowing that when fully re-assembled, tidy, and pretty,.. she WILL run ....another properly functioning 'rescue'

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pistnbroke wrote:Hugz ...higher octain fuel burns slower /more difficult to ignite

Thanks, I assumed it burnt cleaner and cleaned the carbon build up away so left no glowing embers to ignite fuel.

Probably a bit of both.

Hugo

Nope, all Neal's words check out a legitimate Seagull Engineering terms, as authentically used for years by their engineering department...

..so the nice moderator will allow them...

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pistnbroke:

Of course mr moderator whats the point of sorting out technical inaccuracy if its does not translate back to the FAQ which gets modified??

First off, it's not my website and it's not my FAQ. I moderate it with a couple of others, but we have no connection with SOS other than as acquaintances and occasional customers. No money changes hands, this is all a voluntary resource that aims to pool knowledge and exchange ideas. As such it has been, and continues to be, extremely popular and successful.

The site is sponsored by John Williams of Saving Old Seagulls, and the FAQ is from his main site. The bit about spinning up with a drill was added by a gentleman called Fred Holm wood, who I suspect wrote in to John with his thoughts, which were duly added. Up to that point nobody had contributed an explanation for an empirical method of magneto 'revitalisation', which most were prepared - and happy - to use without questioning the theory behind it.

I am sure that when this debate is finished, John will consider amending his FAQ. Until that point, let's just say that the debate is not finished.