Why you should always carry spare parts for your classic car

Here’s a little note sent in by a customer, and a useful reminder as to why it pays to carry some spares.

If you own a classic car, keep a little box in the boot. Inside that you need a coil, a set of HT leads, a spare ignition kit, a distributor cap and a back up points & condenser.

Dear Powerspark Team,

I am extremely grateful to the generosity of your MD Simon Lawther, who attempted to rescue my family from a breakdown in our 1968 Classic Morris Mini Cooper S yesterday Wednesday 24th June.

We were approaching Bromsgrove from Droitwich and on Webb’s island lost power and experienced poor running. We coasted onto the Shell garage forecourt in order to figure out what had happened. Fuel supply was proven ok and nothing looked obviously out of place in the 23D4 distributor – Points ok, rotor arm fine, HT leads looked tight and clean, no cracks in the cap. The coil however was very very hot and this became our main suspect. We tried a water soaked rag to coil it to no avail. With no spare it was time to call the recovery truck.

Simon pulled into the filling station to buy fuel while I was calling the recovery team. With no hesitation he offered straight away to postpone what he was doing and ‘just nip back to work’ to go get me a coil. I pulled the suspect coil off the car and stripped away the front grille in readiness to get into the distributor if needed. I believe in changing only one thing at a time when fault finding. As good as gold, Simon returned directly and offered me his Viper resin core coil replacement and at no charge – what a star!

Simon was in a hurry now and had to leave. We had the new coil installed within just a few minutes. Sadly that did not cure the rough running. Before we could do more the recovery truck arrived, collected the car and bore us all home to Redditch.

On the comfort of my own drive way I was able to give the HT leads a fettle before digging into the distributor to change the condenser – that finally did the trick and smooth running is now restored.

I am sorry this is not quite a story of ‘Viper coil saves the day’, but this is a story of the selflessness and generosity of your MD to whom we are very grateful and through this note would like to share our appreciation and thanks for what he did for us. But we are very pleased now to be sporting the new Viper coil within our engine bay.

Thank you Simon