Not a Z problem - but you may be able to help.

AliK

Vehicle Dating Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Ok experienced old lags who know classic cars well, try your hand at this.

I went over to help my brother in law with his TR6 issues yesterday and half succeeded. But being a spanner head, I can’t sleep comfortably until we crack it - Hey! I gots to know! (If you’re old enough you know what that means).

The car - 1971 TR6 Pi with the Lucas injection

c56a38a8e5dd6d12a3da0220e80591f6.jpg


The symptoms - the car started, warmed up, got to the end of the road and started dying with black smoke coming out of the back.

What we did - checked intake was clear, I changed the points, cap and rotor and gapped them to .45mm (closest I could get to .481 with a metric feeler gauge set and prefer too small to too large). HT leads are new, tested his coil in the Z and it started / revved fine. Sooty plugs cleaned up.

Here are the original points looking very off centre:

3efa3f72c711aad7e7037da42e889c63.jpg


We fired her up, warmed up - no black smoke. Went down the road, got twice as far and the engine lost power and was fighting to stall and slowly did. But no black smoke this time so at least one problem solved. She cranks and sparks but would not start again.

I also used my spark plug tester thing and we are getting spark on all 6.

dc5c1a57c44a02798558370357daa81b.jpg


So with electrics eliminated for now, we started to think fuelling.

We can smell fuel coming out of the exhaust when cranking so it’s getting to the engine.

The only thing we can think of is that the injection metering unit may be faulty and possibly putting too much fuel in, hence fouled plugs. It uses a vacuum line from the the inlet on 3&4 to move a diaphragm of sorts. I wonder if that is perished or not getting enough vac so dumping fuel?

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated. (He’s also posted on the TR6 forum but I figured there are a lot of very experienced and great mechanics here who may have seen these things with TRs).

Ps. What struck me the most playing under his bonnet is how advanced the Z is compared to the TRs!!! They are properly agricultural. [emoji13]
 
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Mr.G

Club Member
Investigating problems on early injected cars is fun..

Sounds like you need a manual that takes through a step by step procedure to check the injection system.

Usual culprits are sensors. You can check the resistance of the sensor for an open circuit.

Not an expert but thought I'd give my 2 cents .. been here myself with a Djetronic system the manual is so helpful as it's a step by step procedure, hopefully the Lucas is the same.

Nice to hear how advanced the Z is over the TR no wonder they conquered America and killed off the British car industry.
 

jonbills

Membership Secretary
Site Administrator
Upgrade it to Speeduino.
There's a couple of guys on the forum with TR6s.

dieing out like that is typical fuel supply stuff. if it was carbs I'd say its the float valves.
how about the fuel pump?
 

AliK

Vehicle Dating Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Thanks JB, the fuel pump is electric and buzzed away nicely when the ignition was on. BUT, having said that, we didn’t get the time to check flow rate / psi as I had to run off home and put kiddies to bed.

Oh and I just HAD to have some fun on the way home through the Sussex back roads while terrorising a Mustang who had a pop and was surprised the Z was more than keeping up. He then stopped for a roadside chat and mutual admiration - I only just made it to bed time ;)

The Z is QUICK these days! Must update my thread.
 

Rob Gaskin

Treasurer
Staff member
Site Administrator
TR6s are based on a really old design hence they are miles behind a Z. When Kevin Irons (Z racer and Samuri partner) bought the 260 I have he went to a garage to test drive a TR6. At the same garage was my 260 and he asked if he could test drive that too. He said the difference was amazing and he bought the Z and that got him into Zs.
 

AliK

Vehicle Dating Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Investigating problems on early injected cars is fun..

Sounds like you need a manual that takes through a step by step procedure to check the injection system.

Usual culprits are sensors. You can check the resistance of the sensor for an open circuit.

Not an expert but thought I'd give my 2 cents .. been here myself with a Djetronic system the manual is so helpful as it's a step by step procedure, hopefully the Lucas is the same.

Nice to hear how advanced the Z is over the TR no wonder they conquered America and killed off the British car industry.

Thank you Mr G. Now don’t laugh but as far as I could see it’s a purely mechanical fuel injection. No MAF, MAP or O2 sensors in sight. The load sensing appears to be purely via the vacuum line to 3&4 intake, head side of the butterflies. Maybe I missed something?

@rob - that’s a great story. So in essence what you are saying is that my BiL needs to sell the TR and buy a Z! [emoji1787]

Gotta say, it does have a lovely hairy chested charm when you drive it though. It feels very “mechanical” if that makes sense.
 

AliK

Vehicle Dating Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Yes, they are a classic British car.

Yep mechanical Fi - is it Lucas?

Yes Lucas sir.

I second what Jon said. The Lucas injection was problematic when new. Did the Speeduino conversion on a friends car, Easy upgrade and the car runs so much better.


Interesting - is there a link to this conversion somewhere?
 

Huw

Club Member
Yes Lucas sir.




Interesting - is there a link to this conversion somewhere?


No idea Ali, Richard the owner did it. I passed him screwdrivers and made tea. He’s gone off to Australia, but will drop him a line.
 

toopy

Club Member
There are a couple of TR6 owners in my local car club, both i believe have long since ditched the OEM injection system.

One spent years chasing problems as they wanted to stay factory, but eventually gave up as it was never quite right, and even specialists couldn't get it 100%
 

AliK

Vehicle Dating Officer
Staff member
Club Member
No idea Ali, Richard the owner did it. I passed him screwdrivers and made tea. He’s gone off to Australia, but will drop him a line.

A man’s gotta know his limits! [emoji12]



Thank you sir, will read with interest. Speeduino seems to have nailed a few things!

There are a couple of TR6 owners in my local car club, both i believe have long since ditched the OEM injection system.

One spent years chasing problems as they wanted to stay factory, but eventually gave up as it was never quite right, and even specialists couldn't get it 100%

You know, I was having similar satanic thoughts about my carbs! But I like the sound and the tinkering too much ;)

When I was lusting after one in my 20s I do recall reading that the injection systems were problematic. That car does needs triple webbers purely for the induction sounds!!!
 
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