I'll have to defer to Tim on that question, though I do think it makes a great theory. Love the dog shot btw.  I should be hearing from trf soon with delivery info. Figured I'd fix the seat while waiting on the temp switch, glue down some carpet, little things like that.

Jim

Hi Jim. So you didnt get it after all. Wired and weird use the same letters but in a different order. And since they both start with the same letter ,thats alliteration. As to all the crazy wiring run abouts and round abouts, only in England they say . Tim

Should have known roundabouts would be in there somewhere. Well the switch came in today. Very nice piece, and a shame to cut the pins off it to fit the new ones really. Next, finding a bung I can turn into an adapter fitting.

Jim

I decided to buy a tap instead of trying to find a fitting, found a package deal on ebay for 20 bucks including shipping for four large metric taps in sizes I didn't have so that was a bargain. While waiting I've had time to think about how I'm going to do this. I have a vent line from behind the thermostat over to the surge tank and it makes sense to me to put the temp switch in that line. Just need a chunk of aluminum that the switch will screw into and fit it with a couple of small hose barbs. Then find a handy spot and run the hoses. The flow from the vent line will be continuous at all times as it bypasses the top half of the radiator to the tank and then to the water pump inlet (dual pass radiator) so I won't have to be concerned with steam pockets and it bypasses the thermostat too so even if the thermostat should stick closed it ought to be operational. Only downside is a lump floating about on the intake manifold but I'm sure I'll be able to strap it down somewhere.

Jim

Jim, will you be putting Megasquirt on this car?

No David, I don't think we'll be keeping it that long. I bought it as a surprise birthday present for Edith and she doesn't appreciate surprises. So, although she claims to like the car, it will be leaving in favor of the vehicle of her choice. In the meantime I've been fixing it up a bit and using it for errands. Dan and I may bring it to Texas if we don't take his TR-4, (the A/C will be nice) but once my car is back on the road it'll go back in the barn until E wants to do something with it. I'd still like to replace the door panels but aside from that it's fine.

It's actually a pretty nice little car, but if I was going to EFI I think I'd look for a newer Buick V6 to put in it and get the advantages of more power and better economy, along with all the EFI bits already there. Maybe get the tranny (4L60E I think) as a package deal with a low mileage Gen-III 3800. That would make a sweet car.

Jim

Here's the piece for fitting the switch:



The 5/16" smooth barb goes into the manifold in the hole tapped for the vent line behind the thermostat, then the push-on fitting goes in place, leaving a 5/16" hose to go to the surge tank. Flow will be directly onto the end of the switch for good response. The housing is made from cast aluminum and is very light in weight, it will be strapped to the fuel inlet to steady it against vibrations.

Now I just need to determine which wires switch at the upper and lower temps and I can finish the control wiring. Should be out driving it tomorrow.

Jim

The black and blue connect at a temperature below boiling. It is marked 92* 87* / 105* 100* so I'm guessing it has to go to about 230F*  to switch the second side. Maybe boiling straight antifreeze...

Had no straight antifreeze so I had to use 50/50 mix. At first it wasn't enough but as the water boiled off and the temp climbed the white wire switched.

So now the question: Does SAAB comply with the standard automotive scheme of black = ground, or do they go with the European industrial convention where blue = ground? (Or was that brown? I never can remember.)

Really it doesn't matter that much as long as the low temp switch doesn't fail, but if it does I'd like the high temp one to be connected to the right lead.

Jim

Seems to work, time will tell how well. The first photo shows the switch location, the second is the fan relay box. Since I found that the vacuum advance that had fallen off the carb and so had one vacuum cap there will be some tuning to do.





Jim

Jim,

For the three wire SAAB switch:

  - The blue wire is for low temperature operation
  - The white wire is the high temp operation
  - The black wire is the common.

Martin

Thanks Martin, that's excellent! (Especially since that's the way I wired it and won't have to change anything :-)
I got it out running errands today with the A/C on and only got slightly above half scale one time so that is promising. Looks like I may need to come up with a more permanent mount for the fan, it may just do the trick. More testing should tell, especially high speed with the A/C. Still have doubts about that, but I do have a much healthier fan if I need it (and if I can fit it in there).

I'm now trying to track down a misfire, which is irregular and apparently in the HEI (Buick V6). The timing light shows some spark scatter and irregular firing so I replaced the coil which seemed to help a little. And it seems all the lights have decided to go on strike so that will keep me busy for a bit. Typical British misconnects there I suspect.

Jim

You are welcome Jim.

I used two fans from a Disco wreck.  Made a bracket to mount them to, in front of the rad (no AC on this buggy.  Work great.



Re: And it seems all the lights have decided to go on strike so that will keep me busy for a bit.

While you are at it, check and lubricate both the main light switch and the hazard switch on the front console.  The wonderful Brits wired all kinds of things through the hazard switch and often it is a key cause of failure for turn signals, door lights, etc.  And, be VERY careful playing with the column mounted combo turn signals, horn, hi low switch.  There are plastic bits in there that get REALLY brittle and break if even slightly abused.  Another wonderful piece of British engineering.  You can buy replacements on ebay and most of the regular suppliers, for anything from $40 - $200 depending on the seller. Don't bother buying a used one.  They are as bad as what you already have.  

M.

All the lights but the two front side markers simply came back. Go figure. Well, except the high beams. So I've been trying to tune up the engine with qualified success, and here's something that I suspect fits the weird wiring category. When I remove the vacuum hose from the distributor the engine runs fairly smooth and I get a steady strobe flash from the timing light. When I plug it back in, the timing light goes out completely and the idle gets very rough like it's hitting on 3 or 4 cylinders. Honest Injun (PIC) that's exactly what it does! What gives? Another infiltration of the dastardly, nefarious, and satanic Lucas influence? (at least it doesn't squirt wiper fluid out of the plug boots)

OK, well there IS an electrical component connected to the vacuum can. The pickup coil, And that is the only remaining component in the HEI that hasn't been changed. Guess I'll head over to Advance.

Jim

Sounds like the reluctor is out of phase with the cap and rotor. So it trys to fire between cyls.
The same thing happens if the green and white wires are reversed.

Fred, yer killin me. Green? white? GAH!
MAYBE there's a green wire and a white wire, the ones on there just look... well, OLD. Have to see what I get with the new one tomorrow evening. I even found a test, but the heck with that! I'm not putting the old one back in anyway. Don't think I'll need to worry, the tabs are different sizes.

Obviously it was in the car too long and got infused with Lucas smoke which was incompatible with the GM parts. I understand the popularity of the HEI now though, the only connections it has to the Lucas system are the power (Ign) wire and the tach lead so it's pretty well isolated and self contained. No Lucas wires to the coil, no Lucas coil, and it even uses Chinese plug wires which are reasonably compatible. Plus, John does a pretty good job of separating them by providing an intermediate wiring harness. The problem is, since this was an old conversion the seals in the harness went bad and the smoke leaked through, causing Lucas-like symptoms in the GM unit, Every piece in there was corrupted, even the GM distributor harness. And it was so obvious what was going on once I realized the intermittent nature of the failure, if I'd only realized it sooner. I am just SO thankful it didn't get to the stage of having the windshield wiper fluid leaking out of the plug wires. I've heard that is almost impossible to cure.

Jim

Fred, I over reacted to the green/white advice a bit I'm afraid. It was good advice and obviously well intentioned. When I was able to check, there was indeed a green and a white wire. More to the point, even though I am going to replace the coil just because it is so old and decrepit, when I did the resistance check I could not get it to fail. Rock solid no matter how I move the wires.

So... in all seriousness and putting aside the Lucas tomfoolery, unless the contacts themselves were the source of the intermittent operation, (and I slipped those out, pinched them in, and applied anti-corrosion grease) how in the world does the vacuum advance cause a misfire? From the plugs it looked to be pretty consistent on the driver's side of the engine, especially #1 which was not firing at all at idle with the vacuum connected. Resistance was 1000 ohms which is right in the middle of the range the test called for.

Well, this evening I'll get the replacement and suspect I'll have to go another round. Module is next again I suppose. Tomorrow they get a couple new one in that we can test on their machine. Could be a problem there.

Jim

Have a look at the phasing of the cap/rotor and pickup.
The reluctor can slip or possibly the advance can is the wrong one.
This causes the ign. to fire when the rotor is in between posts on the cap.
When the vacuum is applied it makes the out of phase condition worse and sends the spark to the next cyl in line instead.
That could explain your timing mark problem as well.
Stick the dist cap on and mark the housing at any of the plug wire posts. Remove the cap and line the rotor up with that mark. The points on the pickup should be lined up or very close to it.
One last thought. Possibly you have a mismatched distributor or components, even fire mixed with odd fire?
At any rate Lucas just has to be involved here somehow.

Cheers
Fred

Thanks, I'll look at that as soon as I can. Parts went B/O so I cancelled and ordered from Rock-Auto at 1/3 the price. Figured if I have to wait I might as well take the discount. So, not too sure how much I can do while waiting. The rotor has 3 points and I think the stator has 6 so I'll see how they line up. Got it all disassembled on the bench right now. Should be the stock distributor, all the parts match so far to an '82 Buick Regal 231 V6. But I haven't looked to see if the points on the stator are equally spaced. Anyway, the thing about the cap, that makes as much sense as anything. It's got those aluminum tabs in the top and there is more room for variations in those, being bent slightly for instance, than anywhere else I can think of. Still, it was such a dramatic change with the vacuum. Winding it up to where the mechanical would have advanced it still ran smooth without vacuum. So, who knows?

Jim

The mechanical advance doesn't affect the phasing of the distributor.
The three point star wheel is an odd fire part I think. Mix that with an even fire cap and there you are.

I'll measure the distance between the points. If it's odd fire either the points on the stator, the rotor, or both would have to be offset I would think.

Jim

Don't know how I missed this, but the cap does not have the plug towers evenly spaced. And the points on the stator are also uneven, three gaps at about .850" and three at about .515" Fred, I guess you called it. Unless there was something else odd that they did with this, someone put an odd fire distributor in this engine. I guess that would make it run rough.

You know, that still doesn't explain why there was no spark with the vacuum hooked up, but I think I might know what would. The gaps on the stator are wide/narrow/wide/narrow/wide/narrow. The plug tower are wide/wide/narrow/wide/wide/narrow.  Looks like a mismatch to me. Then, there is the 4.3 Chevy motor which apparently has 3 versions, an even fire, an odd fire, and a semi-odd fire somewhere in between. Maybe this is a Chevy distributor cap. Or maybe they got fancy with the aluminum tabs on the inside to make one cap fit all. I don't know.

What I do know is that another distributor from the junkyard is going to cost me about fifty bucks, so I'm at the decision point in the other thread. I think I'll put the trigger coil in when it comes and see how it runs. It's an escalating solution. The entire engine from the junkyard if I can find a 4.1 in a Caddy (fairly likely) would be $180, or an extra $130 for a 4bbl intake and carb along with the engine it's attached to, potentially a significantly better one than this that will bolt right in and be complete from stem to stern. Or for another $150 I can get a later lower mileage, more efficient and probably more powerful engine (3800) with it's matching transmission still attached, which will also bolt right in. And if I knew we were keeping the car that is what I would do. Probably the best thing is to take a little vacation, spend some time discussing it with Edith and take enough time to completely sort things out. But I gotta tell you guys, this odd-fire/even-fire business has sort of soured me on the whole idea. I think I've made a legitimate effort to be a fan of the V6 and in the final analysis have been forced to accept that it is a creature of endless and unnecessary compromise. And before you 60 degree guys complain, yes I realize that's a different animal. I also realize that just because this one in particular has led me through a mind numbing array of unlikely symptoms and still more unlikely causes it doesn't mean a well sorted engine won't give excellent service.  But I hark back to the days of the straight six, some of which were in the 300 cubic inch range (5L). Despite some impressive national record holder 6 cylinder cars the six was NEVER considered to really be competitive with the V8 in day to day usage. Puts me in mind of Dad's 300 straight six pickup and his 302 V8 pickup. Near identical trucks, but not even close. In my opinion, nothing has changed. I'm damned glad I never got serious about the V6 as a candidate when I first did the conversion on my car. Why compromise purely for the sake of compromise, when a Buick 300 would do the job so much better in every conceivable way?

But being here, now, I'll probably compromise and fix it as cheaply as I can. First things first though, I need to verify that it is indeed an even fire engine, and that it has an even fire crank. Clearly more fun-n-games ahead.

Jim

Have a look at the balancer bolt. 5/8 is odd fire 3/4 is even. 82 and newer engines had metric threads and a knock sensor boss at the rear of the block.

Fred, do you think the 3 lobed rotor (equally spaced lobes) would work ok with the even fire stator? Nothing unique about the coil and 3 lobes should interact the same with 6 points whether they are odd spaced or evenly spaced it seems to me.

The damper bolt has a 1-1/8" head. Does that tell us anything? The intake bolts are 3/8" NC. It is supposed to be an '82 but maybe the the first ones were left overs. I haven't found a serial number yet, the closest thing is a very light stamping "629" as close as I can make it, on the right front cylinder bank front surface. Can't see well enough to tell if there is a KS boss on the back.

The distributor cap is as I suspected. The aluminum contacts inside are offset so that the gaps between them are within 1/8" of each other despite the offset in the towers. So it appears to be the right cap.

If this is an even fire engine, the crank throws on one bank are displaced from where they would have been on the other engine. This is consistent with the results. The #1,3 and 5 plugs showed a dark color after rough idling while the #2,4 and 6 plugs were white.

Maybe the new pickup will fix it.

Jim

It did. The lobes and points have just a smidgen of interference, just barely touch, so as an experiment I went ahead and put it together that way. Once I remembered to install the rotor button it started and ran fine. So the odd fire tri-lobed rotor will work with the even fire trigger assembly. A good thing to know, wiring wise. And since this pretty much concludes the wiring portion of our program I'll also conclude that the remainder of comments belong on the "Considering a V6 upgrade - TR-7" thread and go there.

Jim