Rain stopped play before we even started today
However, armed with more tools and plenty of space to make lots of noise I did some investigation with my mate. When we had the timing light on the crank pulley we noticed that the advance came in REALLY early and REALLY REALLY hard! That is to say that the total ignition was reached at about 2-3000rpm. Seemed odd so in a break in the rain I pulled the distributor to find that one of the weights effectively had no spring......that'll do it! Now I say effectively had no spring, there was a spring there, but it was very very different from the other side, the spring nly just started to get tight at the advance stops! We hunted round some of the race teams for a pair of springs but in the end found a generic spring to butcher just as an experiment. After putting it all back together again it worked loads better and cleaner than before but due to the unscientific nature of the spring matching it was never going to be perfect. I guess now I need to hunt round for some weights and springs that are a little more appropriate. I think what happened today is termed a eureka moment! I will get it running right one of these days!
On the plus side the car did get plenty more exposure and lots of people came over and showed a great amount of interest, will make it even sweeter when I have my first proper pass!