hohocc

Doesn't happen to sound/smell rich when cranking does it? Almost firing but not quite?

If you do go the new battery route bigger and better is normally not much more expensive than bare bones minimum. Cleaning the existing earth straps is always a good idea. Adding an extra one if it's easy can't do any harm either. Sounds like you are making progress!

300CCA was what my old Hunter had in it's early days so your 325 is probably about what the Moke had when new. However if you do end up buying a battery there's probably bugger all difference pricewise in buying something a bit bigger. Hunter was much better when it had 550CCA. By comparison, my wife's Mazda 2 has 450CCA in a little shopping basket, admittedly there's more electric stuff in it than in a 70s British car.

Has she measured how much it's actually using? My stepdaughter had a similar complaint with her Starlet from a similar era recently. Trying to explain to her how to fill the thing up, then note how many km it goes and how many litres it took when she next filled it was excruciating. She hasn't done it, but has stopped talking about the amount of fuel it uses.

It would be most appropriate if you got a pic of your xjs parked across multiple hairdresser car sorry ev charging point parks.

Gabriel M55999 front struts for Corollas of roughly this vintage are $12.17 NZ on Rockauto at the moment. Sure there's some freight and Jacinda tax to pay but that's not a bad starting point. If they only last a couple of years she will probably have bought something else by then anyway.

Thanks folks, lots of good options here. Turns out I've got a spare distributor so will be able to convert that with the Stealth kit and still have the original as a spare. Like the idea of the new accuspark but am trying to keep the spending on a shortish leash. Appreciate all the info provided, cheers.

Sounds like the 25d4 was used in about everything british in the 70s with 4 cylinders. There's talk on an oz mini forum of a couple of Nissan options which sound of interest: http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1498 As mentioned above I could just put some new points in (may even have a couple of sets laying around), or lose the points in the current distributor, or get a new reproduction that's electronic. Or find the French alternative which is one that came out of left field a bit, will do some googling on that. Am still keen to find out about Japanese off the shelf (or more or less) bits that might do the job. Have had the car since new and the electric bits have always been fair to average at best, a few incremental improvements to ignition, starter and perhaps the alternator would go a long way in making it more usable. When I stopped using it as a daily about 9 years ago it had a bigger battery (550cca vs the original 300) and a water heater in the bottom radiator hose which made winters much more bearable. Really like the old thing but some improvement in practicality would be great.

Way back in this thread: There was mention of a Mitsi Lancer electronic distributor fitting a Billy Bunter/Minx engine, the words suggesting later Hunters had them from new, but no detail was forthcoming. A Nissan Bluebird CA20 dizzy was also mentioned but that sounded less bolt on-ish. After extensive factfinding on wikipedia (yep that may be a contradiction) it would appear Lancers in NZ in the early 80s had a 4g32 up front. Is anybody out there able to fill in the gaps and confirm or deny if the 4g32 dizzy is Hunter compatible? I've got a 72 Hunter and it's about time I got it roadworthy again, if there's an easy cheap bolt on alternative out there for the Lucas distributor I'm keen to find out about it. Japanese ignition from the 80s was clearly worlds apart from British 60s/70s. And assuming it's a goer, has anybody got a dead 4g32 they are parting out? Cheers.

Yep the paint code on the makers plate will be DC.

Any true Hunter Barry would know the colour is not green, but "Deep Chartreuse"... At least it is on mine, which is not quite so tidy.

Might be worth posting your question on rcgroups.com or rcuniverse.com, there must be tens of thousands of those engines out there and someone will have struck this issue.

Well, the car is my second car, which will become my daughters car when she gets her restricted. So if I put a clutch in it and it's not flash I have plenty of time, and another car to use while I pull it apart, possibly buy another new clutch (2 clutches from rockauto is still cheaper than 1 at trade from bnt, and for me at least the grind wasn't free), get a grind done, and put it together again. The car is probably only going to do another 20000km in our ownership so if by not grinding I risk it lasting less than the 100000km it may last by doing the whole job it's still more than likely to last longer than I need. It is also going to be driven by a young woman driver, so maybe it will last another 100000km, or it may have a high likelihood of giving someone a shunt at the lights in a couple of months which would write it off since it's of low value. The guts of it is that by doing it cheap it will probably do the job, the downside of doing it cheap is not that big, and if doing it "right" is unlikely to gain anything I won't take that route. If doing it right is more than likely to gain something then I'd do it right. Well, if I asked that question in a thread most of the responses would be "shit no", from people who had always honed, and there would be very few responses from people who had successfully done rings without honing from which I could make a decision! However there seem to be a lot of people out there who have done clutches, and it's about 50/50 as to if they grind or not. So no I wouldn't do rings without a hone, because I've got no experience of it and don't know of anybody that has, but I do have some (past) experience of doing a clutch without grinding, and there seem to be many others that do. Really it's all about the job I expect the car to do once it's done, and the length of ownership that I foresee. Thanks!

Yeah that sounds about like I thought, I'll see what I find when it's apart and probably just bolt it all together with fingers crossed. Thinking waaaay back I can recall trouble with a new clutch release bearing that disintegrated into a pile of carbon straight after fitting (manufacturing defect), it's the only occasion I experienced any fault in a new clutch. Thanks for the responses.

Gidday, my old corolla needs a new clutch and I'm told by BNT that no clutch manufacturer will guarantee their clutch unless the flywheel is ground. First I've heard of this as it's a long time since I changed a clutch. Is the flywheel grind a significant issue, or is it one of those stupid things that are put in place to give the maker an out if their product is no good? A bit like if you cross the road down the road from a pedestrian crossing and get hit by a tourist ACC will tell you you've been reckless and maybe you should shoulder the blame, when really the tourist was an idiot on the wrong side of the road and you didn't see them coming because they were going the wrong way? I've got no objection to getting the grind done if it's likely to be a problem by not doing it, but if it's a case of there was this one clutch in 1975 that failed due to no grind with no other failures recorded since then I'll not bother. Cheers.