Turbocharger

<stands up> "My name's John and I have a petrol engine. I haven't driven it for nine days." The K1.8 in my MGTF is misfiring, particularly at low revs and wide throttle openings, so I took it apart to see what's wrong. In the meantime I ordered plugs and HT leads, but due to a "communicatory complexity" they won't be here until after this coming weekend, so I spent a sunny bank holiday in the LR while my open top car sat in the garage. I decided to do some fiddling needlessly "fault finding" this evening, and I've found the sparks are escaping. The MG forum are only useful to talk about different types of polish and how to fit chrome this and blinged that, so I'm asking on here since it's also a Freelander engine - it has two coil packs and two HT leads, running wasted spark. There's an audible ticking with the engine running; when I turn off the lights there are sparks escaping everywhere I've shown in red: When I swap only the coil packs over, the sparks still escape by #1 cylinder. When I then swap the plug leads over, the sparks escape by #3 cylinder. I'd like an adult to confirm my thinking, because I think I need to replace one lead - well, both the leads because I'm not a real skinflint but only one's misbehaving, according to the swapping test. However, the sparks are arcing from the body of the coil pack that is connected to the faulty lead, not from the lead itself - so does the coil pack need to be replaced too? The coil packs are rather expensive (and I've not ordered any) so I'd like to avoid spending if possible... Can sparks be caused to escape further up the chain by a bad HT lead?

I'm thinking of it more as a wheeled engine than a car. I'll have a poke around, ensure the engine is unwanted by its current owner and see what boxes of cogs I can find...

Just by the railway bridge, with bits of LR, a 7.5 tonner body etc in it? It's not mine but I've often glanced over the hedge at some of the weird and wonderful stuff there - it's been there ten years or more.

Thanks guys. I've got an engineless Caterham and a 6.5 turbodiesel sat in a field - they didn't form part of the same plan originally but it seems a bit of a shame not to, just because nobody else has yet... Of course, it sits on the 'to do' list behind my own LR, buying a house, keeping SWMBO happy...

No - by that point you'll be looking at an HGV licence...

Not necessarily - surely you just need a copy of the regs, ensure that you meet them and then write down why. Certification doesn't need to be long, tedious or scary, just documented.

Life has presented the opportunity for a Very Stupid Plan. What gearboxes can bolt up behind the Chevy 6.5 V8 for a RWD application?

If I'm stuck long enough to justify a PM, I'll be out there with my own Tirfor... You're welcome for a cuppa though.

If you want some practice you can come and drag my Ninety around the yard outside my house. I live in north Bristol, it's on a slope and I can engage the handbrake gently if it's too easy for you ...

My take is, wire it up so it works. There's plenty of scope for noise to enter the system between the speaker and your ear, you won't be able to hear a buzz or whine over your engine/gearbox/tyres/missus. If you build a system to compete with all of the above you'll just damage your hearing. My amp says 1000W on it but there's no way I can hear it above 70mph - I've lost a radio station in the past and my brain keeps singing the song for me because it was only picking up every other note above the background noise

I think I'll wander completely off topic here and observe, completely independently, that there's also a company in Wrexham called LEGS who do engine and gearbox rebuilds. I know it's probably not relevant here but I thought I'd throw it in anyway. Good luck finding yr LR. It'll be very difficult to shift as a whole vehicle without the paperwork.

Probably a dead short somewhere. Put the electronics books away, break out the multimeter and look for the low resistance. I've got a pair of 6x9s in my Ninety - I had a 12" sub but realistically I couldn't hear it at any speed.

... but the recon engine wouldn't have any history, an auto box back plate or a VG turbo attached. Besides, it didn't look that way at the beginning!

I've got a 300Tdi Defender rad in my garage, swapped out because it was leaking enough to stain the fins and I was lifting it anyway for a timing belt job. Yours for £postage if you want to get it recored and then swap in your own time?

Oil change indeed. I wiped around the rocker box with the "magnet-covered-in-tissue" technique and recovered a bit but not enough to equate to the missing material. However, while I don't want to speak too soon, it's now running better than it has in years and sounds lovely so I'll run it for a week to bed everything down, then it's back to VGT development (which will probably cost me another head and start the whole merry-go-round again... )

Yes, that wear is over 100miles or so. I found one bent adjuster and decided to replace them all, turns out one had missed the hardening treatment stage... I'll put one of the OEM ones back in, return the cam followers to the shop and cross my fingers that the problem's gone away.

Geoff - drag it down to Bristol when I've got my MG back on the road and my VGTdi running properly, supply me with beer while we tackle the job and we'll have two swivels on your truck in a weekend.

They look the same as now??

They say a picture tells a thousand words - they also say there's a novel in everyone. Here's a reasonable essay from me: That wore bloody quickly! I've fitted one of the old ones back again - I guess a problem with the surface treatment?

I don't think it's the pushrods, because I adjusted it all up last night and it looked sensible. I could hear the clearance getting wider as I drove back (clatter clatter) and it was nearly 1mm by the time I got home. I'll swap two and see anyway...

OT: A short search of the engine bay has not turned up a distributor, so I suspect it's wasted spark + coil packs + ECUs + sensors + £££

I adjusted the tappets last night, started it up and it sounded better than it has for a long time. 15 miles to work and back, and it's sounding rattly and down on power again. I whipped the rocker cover off and adjusted the tappets again, all there or thereabouts except #5 which had a monster gap - adjusted properly it looks like this now, note the lack of visible thread on #5 (on the right): This is looking like a worn cam follower from the descriptions above (and hopefully not a cam too). I think I know the answer to this, but do I have to pull the head again to swap a cam follower? Will it be ok to drive in the interim with the adjuster wound up as above, or might it hold the valve open if the follower moves around again? I need a week's motoring while I work out where the misfire's coming from on the MG and order some bits for that...

Time to look at tyre pressures and wheel alignment methinks - cure the problem rather than the symptom.

The way my truck's been changing lately I'm considering fitting a set of bicycle pedals...

Hey, I didn't say I had any better ideas... I'm just challenging the conventional thinking. Here's my take on the matter. If you want the cage to be removable then it needs to be bolted on. It'd be neater to have a sleeve and cross-pin affair (as the front hoops are shown in another thread here) but the angle might make it difficult to remove. If the loads are coming down the stays from an impact on the front hoop then the four bolts will be loaded partially in shear if the plates are parallel to the floor. You could remove this shear loading and make the cage stronger if the square plates were perpendicular to the stays, eg sloping up at the back edge like a miniature spoiler would. That said, these 'floating' plates would then snag on your spare wheel and anything else you tried to put onto the trayback. It seemed silly to keep the same sandwich plates when there wasn't a floor for them to sandwich (you don't have the through-roof sandwich for truckcabs), but on reflection for a bolt-on cage they're probably pretty sensible at floor level anyway. Ignore me...