Eratic ignition

[RRHANS]

Today cruising at 60MPH suddenly ignition started to play up.
Big loss of power, I barely limped home with a shocking and shuddering engine hardly achieving 30MPH.
I had a quick look into the engine bay, hooked up the timing light and came to the conlusion that sparks on all four cilinders are erratic.
Also seem to hear an unusual rattle in the distrubutor.
I will try to remove the airbox tomorrow and take a closer look

All tips welcome!!

Hans

[robertverhey]

Gotta say it sounds like when my fuel pump died.....

[crogw11597]

Sound like when my distributor moved
have a look at http://www.lotusexcel.net/phpbb/viewtop ... tor#p25060

[RRHANS]

I ripped out the dissy and found out that the optical lumination sensor came lose from the plate.
One screw was lose in the cap and that was the ratteling noise I heard.
Its a miracle I made it home.
I will need to find an new sensor, since the the mounting eyes are ripped to pieces.

are the sensors easy to find?

When I removed the airbox I found that on one of the trumpets the baseplate was broken.

[robertverhey]

Mike Taylor? www.lotusbits.com

[RRHANS]

Just had SJ on the phone and it seems pretty unusual to find a lumination on a '86
I will have to check what type of dissy I have, probebly not the correct one.

I need your advice.
What would you do.
Find a new optical sensor and keep the non original dissy.
Find an orignal constant energy dissy.
Other solution that I do not know of.....

I do suppose that the non original dissy will not have the ideal curve to wake up all the horses.
My SE runs well but I can not compare with another Excel to see if I miss some horses.
The engine puls best between 4000 rpm and 5500 rpm, above that there is no extra power gain.
If I look on a Lotus performance chart I see that I should gain 20 horses above 5500 rpm. and I think mine might be on holliday.

So what does yours do above 5500 rpm?

[RRHANS]

UPDATE

this is what is writen on my LUCAS dissy
45D M 4 5085 42636A