I took the TR4A to work this morning and on the way dropped my wife off at the Holiday Inn at Brentwood, this is not a normal day but my wife was on a course and she was getting a lift from the hotel, so rather than leave her car at the hotel for a few days I gave her a lift. It was all going well when I dropped Mel off and I pulled away merrily. Nothing to out of the ordinary so far, then the engine decided to die. Luckily I was just pulling in to a petrol filling station when it happened. I spent the next hour delving about under the bonnet looking for the problem. I soon found the cause of the unexpected stop, a rivet had fallen out of the rotor arm and allowed the metal contact plate to fall off. This was a touch disappointing as I had only fitted the new rotor arm a few weeks earlier. Well to add insult to injury the rivet which held the plate in place had fallen into the distributor body and I didn't have any tools or spares with me in the car (a tool kit and spares are now kept in the boot - I know its shutting the door after the horse has bolted, but at least I will have them in the future). Luckily a few passing motorists lent me some tools to retrieve the rivet, a Phillips screwdriver to remove the distributor base plate to access the rivet and after some temporary repairs the car got me home.
Toolkit for the TR4A
I found the old rotor arm in the garage and put it back on and the car was back to normal. Looking at the failed rotor arm it does seem rather cheaply made, the only fixing for the contact plate is a small rivet which is pressed into a serrated hole in the plastic rotor arm body, the old rotor arm is much more substantial with the contact plate moulded into the rotor body.
The original rotor on the left and the failed unit on the right
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