Lumply Degs

When I brought Degsy home t'other day it was starting to run a bit lumpy. I took it out for another spin later and it was running really badly. Whenever I put my foot down the engine coughed and spluttered. I managed to get Degsy back to the house and had to wait until the weekened for time to fettle the motor. The weather was flithy all night but whilst it was still really windy at least it was not raining. First job this morning was to get the bonnet up and have a look at the timing.

I moved the air filter and took out the spark plus from the front cylinder. I turned the engine over with the starting handle until the timing mark came round on the flywheel. I reached for the distributor to loosen the cap and the body just spun in my hand. Well then that will be the reason the timing was shot. The distributor came complately out the the engine. That is not right! I put it back at and tried to find out why the thing was lose. The dissy has a crimp bolt that is supposed stop the dissy moving. It was not doing its job. I took the crimp ring off the engine and offerred it up to the dissy which was now on my work bench. This is when I found the the crimp ring was deformed which was why it was not doing its job. I cleaned up the crimp ring, nut and bolt. I had to take the hammer to the ring to straighten it out. Whilst I had the dissy off I scrubbed the body with the wire brush. It came up fairly well but it after thirty years it is never going to come up like new.

I put the crimp ring back in place then set the points gap in the dissy. I put the dissy back its place. It took just a slight turn of the spindle to engage the drive on the bottom of the dissy with a drive on the engine. I turned the dissy untill the points were fully open on the top of the cam. I then carefully tightened up the crimp ring. This time the ring did its job of holding the dissy in position. I replaced the spark plugs, leads and air filter. I jumped in the driving seat, and with a little trepidation, turned the ignition key. Degsy burst into life but the engine did not sound to quite right. I checked the order of the ignition leads and notice that two leads were the wrong way round. A quick swap of the leads and Degsy engine note settled down. Now Degsy runs sweetly. I took a spin round the block to be sure everything was just so. I am happy to report that Degsy has never run better.