The car ran perfect on my first three runs, but halfway through my fourth run it started missing something fierce. I was barely able to limp it off the course and back to my trailer where it died and would not restart. It appeared that I wasn’t getting any spark from the coil so I loaded up and went home to swap coils for Sunday’s event.
One home and out of the bright sunlight I found the coil to be firing. I had pulled the cap off the distributor at the track and all looked well, but further investigation reveled that the rotor was able to freely move from the 5:00 position to the 7:00 position. Not good!
At this point I thought it would be a good idea to call Jim and ask if he had ever encountered anything like that, hoping perhaps it was just something that slipped. I certainly didn’t have any expectations of getting ahold of a vendor on a Saturday afternoon, but he answered immediately. We discussed what was happening and both felt that something in the 123 had failed. He seemed genuinely concerned about my predicament and said “ I’ll just build you another one and ship it out and then you can ship the bad one back”. Now, who does that? Most will say ship it back and we’ll check it out and then repair or replace it. Not Jim, he wanted to get me running again as soon as possible. I consider that above and beyond expectations!
I told him I was going to pull it out and reinstall my points distributor so I could compete on Sunday and perhaps the issue would be apparent once the 123 was removed. It was!! Jim had wanted me to call him back and let him know if I found the problem, so this is what told him… The shaft that drives the oil pump on one end and the distributor on the other end had broken! There is a slot on the distributor end of that shaft that the tang on the bottom of the distributor fits in and half of that slot hat broken off. Jim immediately said “do you want me to send another shaft to you”, which would have been a real godsend had I not already had one in with my spares.
I replaced the broken shaft, reinstalled the 123, and then had a great day on Sunday! I was very happy with the ease of installation and the performance of the 123 and the rev limiter feature gives me one less thing to worry about. The immobilization feature could come in hand too
Now, I’ve bought from several of our vendors had nothing but good experiences with all of them, but Jim’s helpful service and genuine concern for his customers is a real rarity these days. Thanks Jim!
P.S. despite what my butt tells me every time I hit a bump, there is some compliance in the roadster’s suspension!
