Nah, just a basic one.
I did see another post that said someone had a similar problem with not enough advance available on the dizzy. For them, seems that the idle microswitch which should activate when you take your foot off the throttle sometimes gets stuck and therefore doesn't send the engine management into 'idle mode'. Hence not being able to keep the revs up to 1,000 with the red cable to the coil disconnected. I think this is defo part of the problem, I was using a screwdriver wedged between the microswitch and the plate on the throttle valve which hits the microswitch, to get it to idle up to 1,000. But thinking about it, that could have put everything out. Took it up to my local garage, who are really good with the distributor cranked all the way round clockwise, as I mentioned this nearly gets the mark on the gearbox housing and the 6degree tdc mark lined up when timing with the gun, and the car flew, no hesitancy, nothing. I could possibly file the brackets on the dizzy that hold it on to the cam side of the engine, so I get some more movement and I'm sure if I could twist it slightly more, I'd be able to get the marks to line up. But It shouldn't be the case that I need to do that.
It is odd, the dizzy/rotor arm, can't be out by 180 degrees, the car just wouldn't run properly.
Don't think the cam belt timing is incorrect either, as I mentioned, the cambelt was changed a year ago, and the car drove fine, till the new distributor was fitted (gsf one). So we'll see what the garage say, could be that somethings slightly 'out' on the new dizzy, but I doubt that. Think the cylinder head is standard, cos of course fitting different cams could change things with timing. But as I said the old dizzy worked fine with the adjustment on it pretty much half way between the limits of it's adjustments, clockwise/anti clockwise, so we'll see what the garage say.
Hoping I get a call from the garage saying, 'yes mate, you hadn't adjusted x, so that was causing the problem!'. Not great as I want to drive the car down to cornwall on Wednesday and just don't feel confident in it at the mo!
