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| Joined: | 03-12-2005 |
| Location: | Kingman, Arizona USA |
| Posts: | 532 |
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Strombergs are VERY reliable and the only things likely to go wrong with them are wear, damage caused by somebody jamming a screwdriver where it didn't belong, blocked passages due to rust from the fuel tank, and corrosion if there's lots of water in the fuel. For each carb, make sure you can lift the vacuum piston all the way to the top of the carb opening with force from a single finger, and that the piston when released will then glide all the way down by itself, within a couple of seconds at most. If not, you'll need to fix whatever's wrong inside the carb in question.
Ignition.
It's my understanding that the alignment marks for the gear that drives the distributor were for Lotus' convenience during engine assembly, to make sure the distributor would be installed correctly. In any event, if the ignition timing is right, the gear's orientation does not matter.
If you are getting spark at what seems to be the right time, and if you have fuel in the carbs and have applied a little bit of 'choke', but the engine won't even cough, then possibly the plug wires are not in the correct order. You could have the wires in the distributor 180^ out so that the #1 cylinder is firing when the #4 should fire, etc.
Fortunately, it is easy to check for that. Set the engine to #1 TDC making sure that the crank timing marks are aligned and the two cam gear marks point to each other. Pop the distributor cap, and note where the rotor is pointing. Line up the dist. cap to the distributor body and determine which plug wire turret the rotor points to. Manually trace the plug wire from that turret and ensure that it goes to the #1 (front) cylinder.
If so, the next wire, moving COUNTER-clockwise while looking at the top (wire side) of the dist. cap, should go to the #3 cylinder, followed by the wires to the #4 and #2 cylinders. If this is the case, the spark plug wires are correctly installed.
However, if the wire does NOT go to the #1 cylinder, disconnect all four plug wires from the dist. cap. Next, manually trace the wire from the #1 cylinder until you find the dist. end, then install that wire into the turret to which the dist. rotor is pointing. Moving COUNTER-clockwise while looking at the top (wire side) of the dist. cap, the next turret should go to the #3 plug wire, followed by the #4 plug wire, and finally the #2 plug wire.
Reinstall the dist. cap and make sure the wire from the coil is still in place. Try to start the engine again. It should fire right up. You'll still need to set the timing with a timing light but this should not be a problem.