Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Keith D]

I bought my 1928 Morris Cowley as a runner in 1984. I used it on Club events for a couple of years with a very tired engine before getting it completely rebuilt. The full monty - new poured bearings, liners, aluminium pistons, the lot. At that time, I found that long reach 18mm spark plugs were not available, so the engine man suggested he fit a set of tapped bushes (18mm/14mm) in the plug holes and 14mm long reach plugs with extended electrodes. This was done.

Back on the road in 1986. Horrible!! It would not pull well, no matter what I did. Very, very hard to start, hot or cold and was frequently overtaken by Austin Sevens! I tried for several years to improve things but to no avail. I pulled apart and reset the magneto, SU carby and the valve timing so many times that I almost wore them out from the outside. Finally, in disgust, it went up on axle stands in the back of my garage and was forgotten for two decades.

Back to a few weeks ago. I am now retired and decided that I was going to get the Cowley running properly or put a match under it (only joking!!) I pulled a plug out to check for a spark. The loctite holding the tapped bush into the head let go and the plug came out with the bush still threaded on it. To my horror I found that the bl**dy fool who had rebuilt the engine had not cut the bush to the correct length! The electrode was completely pocketed inside the bush! I quickly removed the other three and found them all the same! The bottom of the bush extended almost to the face of the block between the valves. No wonder the poor engine had no power. It's a wonder that it even ran at all!

I promptly cut about 3/16"-1/4" off all four bushes to the correct length, retimed the magneto and guess what? The car now runs very nicely.

I am looking forward to getting it inspected by the Club in a couple of weeks time and taking her out for a nice long run!

It proves that we are never too old to learn!!!

Keith

[peter scott]

Hi Keith,

That's very interesting. My own old car is specified to use L10 plugs which are quite well socketed although later versions (with no change to the head)
are specified with N8

The L10 is 1/2" reach and N8 3/4". I didn't notice a big difference in performance although my car is fairly insensitive to ignition timing. Did you try advancng the ignition when running with your plugs socketed?

Peter
_________________
http://www.nostalgiatech.co.uk
1939 SS Jaguar 2 1/2 litre saloon

[Scotty]

That's really great news after all these years its been sitting - you've got a lot of driving to catch up on.

Scotty.

[victor 101]

That was a lucky break,(albeit 20 years late), how much more time and effort would have been involved before you found the problem, or put it away for another few years?.