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Six Cylinders Motoring Notes

Six-cylinder

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Six-cylinder Rank: Talbot Tagora

Six-cylinder

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I started writing my confessions of 2022 and it is/was a great year for driving our own cars. If you want to see what I drove from our own collection then the link takes you to an online advent calendar I have created for the month of December one day at a time, in no particular order.

https://calendar.myadvent.net/?id=hhc8tn1h0b9fvr4dy1i6bxa2483r7z5x

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Six-cylinder Rank: Talbot Tagora

Six-cylinder

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I have now driven the Peugeot 404 on the road.

With the help of @Zelandeth we changed the cracked fuel hoses, replaced the filter and found the reason for it was sucking air bubbles last time. The top of the fuel pump was loose and a simple tighten solved that problem.

Then our troubles began as it would not start, we did all the usual things like cleaning up the distributor cap and still no go. To remove the spark plugs we went home to get my special thin walled, deep box spanner and it was only later we found the one @Harriytaithad thoughtfully left in the boot.  

It turns out the spark plugs were wet with petrol and we had to toast them over the camping stove, a squirt of easy start and it coughed into life. We refitted the missing headlight and I took it for a test drive, only 4.1 km but enough to convince me it was capable and safe to drive on the road.

Next week Zel is going to have a look at the electrics for me as they are still a bit hit and miss.

The big question is when you switch it off why will it not restart without a 5 minute pause?

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  • Six-cylinder changed the title to Six Cylinders Motoring Notes - Peugeot 404 first road trip
LightBulbFun Rank: Talbot Tagora

LightBulbFun

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46 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

The big question is when you switch it off why will it not restart without a 5 minute pause?

I wonder whats the condenser condition like? if its worth trying another? I have to wonder if its degrading when hot, not enough to cause the car to stall but just enough to prevent it from starting?

same for the ignition coil etc

 

 

otherwise very awesome to see it completed a road test without anything going wrong :) 

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Zelandeth Rank: Isuzu Florian

Zelandeth

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It's a really strange one and has me well puzzled.

I don't think it's a heat soak issue as it's not "Switch off, wait a minute and it won't go," rather you switch it off and go straight back to start and there's not even a cough.

I checked when it was doing this before and we had a solid spark at the plugs, thinking fuel must be to blame I gave it a quick scoosh of easy start but absolutely nothing.

Wait five minutes, and off she goes.

It's absolutely bizarre and I'm frankly baffled by it.  I've had engines which wouldn't want to restart, but they'd still cough, splutter or something...this is just absolutely not interested in the slightest - until she goes again.

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RichardK Rank: Lancia Gamma

RichardK

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I had something similar with a Visa and it was down to the alternator and an unhappy battery, but I can't remember why. However, my brain's trying to flag something regarding "a visual spark you can see" vs "actual sparks that'll run a car" and a failing coil on a CX 22.

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Zelandeth Rank: Isuzu Florian

Zelandeth

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43 minutes ago, RichardK said:

I had something similar with a Visa and it was down to the alternator and an unhappy battery, but I can't remember why. However, my brain's trying to flag something regarding "a visual spark you can see" vs "actual sparks that'll run a car" and a failing coil on a CX 22.

Yeah, that's kind of where my brain was going - because what else could it be?  I've ascertained we *have* a spark, but how strong it is during the falt condition hasn't really been tested.

I'll need to get a tester on the other end of the leads I think (the plug end is really hard to get to as the plugs are recessed about a mile down into the head) and see what we've got.  But it feels like it *has* to be ignition.

On the plus side it seems repeatable so shouldn't be *too* hard to fault find with a bit of time.

One of the first things that will be getting replaced will be the main battery leads as they're really not in a great shape and do get rather worryingly warm during cranking.

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RichardK Rank: Lancia Gamma

RichardK

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9 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Yeah, that's kind of where my brain was going - because what else could it be?  I've ascertained we *have* a spark, but how strong it is during the falt condition hasn't really been tested.

I'll need to get a tester on the other end of the leads I think (the plug end is really hard to get to as the plugs are recessed about a mile down into the head) and see what we've got.  But it feels like it *has* to be ignition.

On the plus side it seems repeatable so shouldn't be *too* hard to fault find with a bit of time.

One of the first things that will be getting replaced will be the main battery leads as they're really not in a great shape and do get rather worryingly warm during cranking.

This! Resistance on battery leads etc. But I think that caused the alternator to boil the battery in weird ways on my Visa.

The Visa could do about 80-100 miles before things began to fall off - wipers and lights then sparks. Once stopped it would appear dead - but go away, come back, and it'd be fine on a turn of the key. Not even jumped - at first. After 400 miles the battery was toast - but a new battery had all the symptoms. However I fixed it by changing everything at once so I don't know what /fixed/ it.

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Zelandeth Rank: Isuzu Florian

Zelandeth

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7 hours ago, RichardK said:

This! Resistance on battery leads etc. But I think that caused the alternator to boil the battery in weird ways on my Visa.

The Visa could do about 80-100 miles before things began to fall off - wipers and lights then sparks. Once stopped it would appear dead - but go away, come back, and it'd be fine on a turn of the key. Not even jumped - at first. After 400 miles the battery was toast - but a new battery had all the symptoms. However I fixed it by changing everything at once so I don't know what /fixed/ it.

This is still running an old school generator as well for extra potential for electrical strangeness.  I'm not 100% it's charging either, though it definitely was when we started out.

If it's as simple as an ignition system service and going over the heavy duty side of the power supply I'll take that as a win.  Fact that it flooded out so easily when we went to cold start it kind of suggests to me the spark isn't maybe the strongest - though the belt it gave me when I was checking if we had spark at that point suggests there was *plenty* of juice at the king lead at that point - though that was before I had looked at the distributor cap which was quite badly fouled (I cleaned it up a bit).  We've since found there was a new cap in the car, so that will be going on early in proceedings.

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Fumbler Rank: Lancia Gamma

Fumbler

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27 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

This is still running an old school generator as well for extra potential for electrical strangeness.  I'm not 100% it's charging either, though it definitely was when we started out.

If it's as simple as an ignition system service and going over the heavy duty side of the power supply I'll take that as a win.  Fact that it flooded out so easily when we went to cold start it kind of suggests to me the spark isn't maybe the strongest - though the belt it gave me when I was checking if we had spark at that point suggests there was *plenty* of juice at the king lead at that point - though that was before I had looked at the distributor cap which was quite badly fouled (I cleaned it up a bit).  We've since found there was a new cap in the car, so that will be going on early in proceedings.

It sounds as if you're heat-soaking the coil and/or the condenser. I reckon both or either one is electrically breaking down after the car is shut off. I can't imagine the voltage regulator for the dynamo is all that happy either. Might there be a generator-esque alternator going in its place one day?

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  • Six-cylinder changed the title to Six Cylinders Motoring Notes -
Six-cylinder Rank: Talbot Tagora

Six-cylinder

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5 minutes ago, RichardK said:

That red Manta ❤️ I would very much like to see one of those again close up.

We sold our 1.8 sports hatch last year to keep the early 1.9 Auto Coupe. 

Both cars need a fair amount of work, but the Coupe is booked for welding and MOT work so it should be on the road next year.

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