So I am looking and debugging and thinking and wondering why the Hell this thing won’t start. well, it turns out the previous owner switched the firing order completely wrong. I am surprised the car could run at all. My guess is the extreme timing changes was made by the previous owner the make up for the mis-wired ignition system.

firing_order.gif
In the Haynes manual and the official British Leyland maintenance manual for TR7s, they refer to the correct firing order of 1-3-4-2, but nowhere I could find a diagram showing corresponding distributor cap plugs.

There was a brief discussion on TR7 Forums but there was even some debate there.

Anyway, here is the diagram.

Now that I have my 1980 TR7 Spider wired correctly, it runs like a champ! A champ I say! This was the root cause for the car not running initially. The previous owner probably swapped the plugs and mis-wired the plugs. The plugs I pulled out showed NO evidence of wear. The mis-wired plugs is probably what sent this Triumph to the tobacco barn all those years ago.

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