I drove my 1995 Disco (3.9L Gasoline) to work the other day and it was running great as always. I tried to start it up at lunch and it turned over like normal but there wasn't even a sputter. Tried a few times and decided to try again later. It had the same results later. I have fuel pressure but I don't seem to be getting spark when I hold a wire next to the block when it turns. I recently replaced the ignition coil wire as it had completely corroded away (into powder) inside of the coil socket and would not start. The new wire shows signs of severe corrosion and has turned pale green but is still in tact. I pulled off the distributor cap and it looks good under there. The contacts and rotor still look good. The amplifier has been relocated to the front of the vehicle, next to the coil. Both alarm fuses have been pulled since I bought it because the previous owner destroyed the wiring in the driver door. I got new door handle and hard wired it into the system (I couldnt use the harness because the receiving harness was removed by the previous owners). When I installed the fuses the alarm went off continuously and I could not deactivate. I have been driving without the fuses for the alarm for well over a year. The only side effect of this seems to be that all of the doors (except for the rear hatch) have to be closed in order for the solinoid to engage the starter. I have read that there is no spider in the 1995 Disco so that rules that out. I have a Triumph mechanic who has never seen the vehicle telling me that his Rover guy insists it is the amplifier. Because of the corrosion in the coil socket, I feel that it is he coil. Does anyone have any insight?

 

The Triumph guy might be right. The igniters in these cars are junk, usually punctuated by the fact that they get too hot. If your module has already been relocated then temperature shouldn't be an issue anymore. But it still could be bad I suppose. A friend of mine went through like 3 and a distributor on his RRC before he finally just converted it to use an MSD box.

 

So should I go ahead and replace the Amplifier and see what happens?

 

Can you test it before you replace it? I hate to see people replace parts without at least trying to test them.

 

I am not sure I know how to test the aplifier. I also don't have a meter that will read fast enough to detect the pulse voltage going to the ignition coil. So I can't check that either.

 

There is a test listed in the rave manual under "LUCAS CONSTANT ENERGY IGNITION SYSTEM -V8i"

 

This would be so much easier if the thing was at my house and not in te parking lot of my office.

 

What would it take to convert it to MSD?

 

He used the MSD 6A or 6AL or something and the tach adapter... not SURE the tach adapter was required, but we thought it was needed for the ECU to get a tach signal. He hollowed out a known bad igniter and used it to mount the wires going from the MSD box to the distributor. I read some article where a guy was converting to a GM module instead of MSD and he said don't break the lucas part, that it was made out of something nasty. I didn't die, but my life might be shortened.