At last.

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Well after briefly owning a turbo years ago for about 1/2 an hour and lots of cars in between it was time to get one properly bought. So it was.
Drove back merrily from Derby and is now looking happy on my drive.

Welcome to the fold Sam

Cheers, it's interesting to drive it an I need to recalibrate my head to get the most from it. It's an atmo and so I will be doing things with the carbs fairly soon, it's quite grumpy when cold and seems to have the odd lump here and there. One of the 74 vacuum pipes was disconnect which cheered it up and it did stop on me yesterday, I think that was down to the vac pipe being off and me being on the overrun in a fairly heavy duty manner.
Sam

[BIG_MVS]

Welcome to Alpine ownership.

It probably just needs using to iron out some snagging from it's slumber.

You will have to have a drive over for a brew sometime soon.

Howdy all. I'm busy recalibrating myself to get a good feel for the handling etc but I've a couple of incidents of sudden cut out. Both time it has restarted but not immediately. The was it does is akin to ignition being turned off. I'll go through all the wires and check connections now but would appreciate any pointers if there are common items that fail in this manner. Intermittent faults are always painful.

After how long a drive/hard a drive ?
Sudden cut would point to coil/control unit .No splutters?fuel related ? It's waking up after a long sleep so I'd just keep a mental log for a few trips and see if it shows any pattern .

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No splutters. I'm pretty sure it's ignition so had a fish around. I found this connector was upside down in front of the carbs. It's the signal from the distributor so I think it may have been grounding occasionally. It's zip ties clear and I'll put a new cool on as a matter of course.

Thought you'd soon turn up here!

I'll go through all the wires and check connections now but would appreciate any pointers if there are common items that fail in this manner. Intermittent faults are always painful.

R167 ... (see below) .... is worth disconnecting and cleaning all the pins with "Servisol Super 10 Contact Cleaner Spray" ..... available from Maplins if you have not got some already.
This connector carries all the signal voltages as well as supplies for the Ignition circuit ...... whether it is the cause of your problem or not .... it is good to make sure it is clean and making good contact.



The next pic shows where the green signal wire (ign pulse) exits from the distributor ..... remove the screw holding the bracket, and carefully unplug the green cable, then again with your contact cleaner clean the pins.
As with R167, having cleaned and sprayed the contacts, reconnect then disconnect a couple of times before finally reconnecting .... this has the effect of scratching any surface corrosion that may be on the pins themselves.



One final point ...... I notice that the felt washer/bung inside the rotor shaft appears dry ..... soak the washer/bung with engine oil whilst you have the distributor cap off.

On mine I found a burnt out connector on the coil supply resistor pack. This made the ignition very intermittent, simple fix once found, but not visible without some dismantling.
Coil normally runs at low voltage, the starter feed provides a boost and the resistor pack provides the mechanism, its bolted to the frame holding the ignition electronics...shouldn't be hard to get off and worth checking all those connections.
Cheers
Lee

Brilliant,
Many thanks for your advise, diagram and photo, I note your green signal wire has been tucked neatly out of the way, mine wasn't and a small exposed bit was potentially grounding. I will still go through all of the connectors and clean and remake them, it's an important part of making friends with a car.

Cheers!

......... I note your green signal wire has been tucked neatly out of the way, mine wasn't and a small exposed bit was potentially grounding.

From memory, the green signal wire is a screened cable and the screen is the bit that you can see in your damaged cable, and as such it would not cause any trouble if it touched any metal part of the engine as it would be at the same potential.
However, what I would do is clean / degrease the end of the connector and wire where the screen is exposed .... allow to dry ...... then put a blob of silicone sealant from the end of the connector tapering down to the cable to protect the screen from any further damage.
Also note in the diagram above ..... there is an Earth point behind the ignition module ... M16 ..... it would be worth checking that it is in good condition ...... this is the earth for the whole ignition system.

It was the connections marked 108 that were ruined on my car, along with the connector on the bottom (not numbered) that feeds the coil. It's a wierd hybrid ignition system on these cars, not points, but not engine managed either.
I'm sure you can fix it easily.
Lee