Distributor brush

[davidwheeler]

My carbon distributer brush deposits carbon on the inside of the Consortium distributor cap resulting in misfiring.   I have to clean it every 100 miles or so.   I have tried various brushes but never solved the problem.   Has anybody met and overcome this problem?

[davidwheeler]

I think I have the answer.   I carefully cleaned the distrubuter cap but after only a couple of hundred yards the misfire was back. Today I changed the cap and rotor for that from the other car.   This has a brush I made myself from coppery brushes I had found somewhere and all was well.   No more plating of carbon.    I got out one of my stock of copper brushes and cut a new brush for the rotor.  It took a long time as the stuff is very hard.   I have not fitted this one as the other car is stripped down for block repairs but I think the problem is that ordinary carbon brushes, such as those I got recently from the Consortium, are just too soft.

[Tony Stephens]

First time the Consortium have had that complaint, I hope it's an isolated incident because we have a whole box full of them, I guess it wasn't possible to buy smaller quantities!

[davidwheeler]

Hm, interesting!     It does seem to be a problem with that particular distributor cap but it is just the same as the other one!

[Dikappa]

Because i did not have the 'brush' rotor, I converted to airgap, and heve had no issues.  Very pleased with that solution...

[davidwheeler]

Please explain!

[Dikappa]

David,

I have a 9th series bosch coil dynamo/distributor on my car, and this distributor is originally air-gap and has a different shaft/rotor fitment. (Identical to the BMW DIXI, same dyno/distributo but opposite handed so not suitable for the lambda sadly) but I believe you can use a Bosch 6 cylinder rotor and the 4 cylinder cap (if you can find one, they are very rare, and although there are quite a few dixi's still around, as far as I know no one has ever done a refabrication.
On the second pictrure is an alfa 6 cylinder rotor, and on the next rwo the alfa rotor compared to the later dixi/9th series rotor.
First pic is the dixi cap.

Off course it does not look original on an earlier car, but it works flawlessly.

I used the 9th series as it came with my car and was already fully rebuild, and because the correct magdyno is missing its cap and rotor altogether....

[davidwheeler]

I can see how that works but not something I can do for myself.   In any case, I thhink the harder bruush material will do the job.   Interesting though...