OK, I give up !!!!!!!

[Leon s]

Flywheel, I'm not far away and can pop over Sunday morning if required.

Leon

[Ruairidh Dunford]

If you paid somebody to build this you really need to speak to them initially.

The Norfolk A7 Club is active and friendly, they will help you but your engine builder needs to sort this out first.

[Alan]

You should be able to feel approx where TDc is against the compression when the plugs are in or your thumb over the hole with plugs out. This will give you some confidence that the flywheel is marked correctly. I’m wondering if the timing is 180deg out. If you swap the middle two leads over and it starts and runs on two you’ll know it is.

[flywheel1935]

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback. Leon, afraid can't do weekends, but around Tu/Wed/Thur and Fri, is thats poss ?
Ref engine builder, he's aware of issue, but to be fair to him I'm trying out all the obvious stuff before I give it back,+
he's 250 miles away from where I live. Alan, tried 180 deg , + had valve chest cover off and put spare camshaft as reference next to it. (Dizzy been out a few times)
I'm 99.9% sure I've got it correct. :-(

[Alan]

Just going back to John Mason’s last point. Are you sure the battery is good? Particularly with a new engine the current to drive the starter can cause enough voltage drop to prevent the coil from firing. Added to that, an engine does need a minimum cranking speed to get going. Could you either try a 12v battery (if you are on 6v) or maybe a separate battery to the coil, or even just a tow start. One of my race engines, with a lot of valve overlap and next to no static compression, needed a tow start at 30mph for its first start up. It was ok after it had run a few minutes.

[Rick F]

As I suggested earlier, try a tow start. I have done this after several engine rebuild proved impossible to start and it never fails.

[Chris KC]

Checklist might help:

  A7 Doesn't Start.xlsx (Size: 18.91 KB / Downloads: 28)

When mine refused to start after a rebuild despite 2 or 3 days of head-scratching I finally traced it to air leak between inlet manifold and block. Went from zero to runner just like that; and very hard to detect.

[flywheel1935]

Dereham, but not available for a couple of weeks - Special up on axle stands, Norwich cathedral for a memorial service tomorrow and off to Portugal for 10 days on Monday,

If you are still imobile  on 27 Sep, get in touch

Checklist might help:


When mine refused to start after a rebuild despite 2 or 3 days of head-scratching I finally traced it to air leak between inlet manifold and block. Went from zero to runner just like that; and very hard to detect.

Hi Guys, thats been mentioned. I'll take a look at the manifold, and put some hylomar on for good measure.
But if its not running right after  a few more attempts then its back to the builder, can't afford wasting much more time at present.

[Paul N-M]

As RD said, it should go back to the engine builder. Most professional builders should have the ability to test run a rebuilt engine prior to hand over to the customer. Was it a complete rebuild or did you fit the carbs, manifolds, dizzy etc? If you did some of the work then that makes things more awkward.

Paul N-M

[Zetomagneto]

Seems harsh on engine builder, OP said it ran after rebuild then after a few weeks ran rough, now not running. As said by many, this is a fuel or ignition problem