New Carb Bar Thingy

Well, not a new bar, just the plastic end things. Cost a poxy tenner! Took some adjusting as the carbs were tuned using the old taped up knackered one.

Taped up knackered ends

Shiny and new

Oh deary me

I shall not be going to the Peopleton show on Saturday then. Got it out today, what a disaster. Its backfiring all of the time, and when it's not backfiring out of the exhausts, it's frontfiring out of the air filters. How?! Why?! I haven't even touched the carbs this time. 

I took it to the garage to put some more fuel in it and then took it straight back in favour of an old Peugeot 206 that never goes wrong and is worse less!

De Ja Vu

It's not going to rain today so out came the Beast for it's first run out of 2014. And once again, it's a pile of crap. I appear to have lost several cylinders again. I had to keep my right foot constantly bipping the throttle through fear that the engine was going to stall, braking only on the handbrake. At least that works. Why didn't I buy an MX5?

Eight Cylinders

After weakening the mixture to nothing to get it to pass, Phil "tuned it by ear", the old fashioned way. I can now drive without the choke; it sounds like it has eight cylinders; (ignore the fan belt), here it is:

Misfiring

It is. Again. I haven't done anything to it. Will this car ever work properly?

More Carb Action iii & Tachometer

So I left this particular saga with a very badly running engine. This time, the old team was back together, that is, the mechanic, the tamed electrician and the tea boy. Here they are. 

One looks like he is as high as a kite and the other is having an Ascent of Man moment in the cab with something red and shiny. 

However, without them I am lost and thank you for their help and ridicule over the last four, mainly fruitless years

More Carb Action ii

Forgot to add this video. This was going on near the end. WTF is going on with full throttle?

More Carb Action

Springs, linky thing and needles

OK, so here we go again. We (Simon) got the springs and the linky thing and the needles ready and started at 1100. 

Went from step 1 to step 26 on a downloaded SU booklet. Got it to sound like this ... check out the flames! ...

And the linky bar thing doesn't appear to fit!

By 5, it was ticking over much much better but not quite right. 

ill fitting linky thing

Plugs and Leads

I've got some new plugs and some new HT leads to see if I can fix the lumpy not running properly thing. If it ever stops raining and/or my cough/flu ever nobs off, I'll have a go at fitting them. Due to both of the above excuses, I have not used the car for about 3 weeks. I do wonder if it's all worth it sometimes.

Sunday 31st July

The 12th Malvern Classic Car Show and Classic Ford Day (including Capripower National Day  at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern) is today. I picked up Simon (to navigate/mechanic/push/amuse me) and we then met Pete (TRDC) at the Rose and Crown in Stourport. 

The temp gauge is already at half. But I am not putting the fans on, I want to see what happens. We "zoom" off up the Worcester Road A449 towards the motorway. The Beast has now done the longest journey sine I had it 3+ years ago! After a junction of the M5, we pull in and wait for the rest of the TRDC. It's very hot, so the fans now go on, which is just as well as the Worcester bypass to Malvern road thing is always packed. We sat for ages and ages and I was fully expecting the Beast to explode, but no, it soldiered on.

By the turning to Malvern, the traffic became even denser due to a blonde chick breaking down in a crappy Ford Ka. It was at this point that I tempted fate, turning to my co-driver and suggesting she ought to have bought a reliable Triumph instead. I then managed to stall. And it wouldn't start again. Simon pushed, and I managed to bump it. Off we continued to the showground.

When we got there, we had a look around the piles of rusty crap/stalls and a few of the other cars. I then asked old Mike (TRDC) if he could help me put the bonnet scoop/fresh air thingy back on as I hadn't managed to get the bugger on. "Never mind that. What's happened here?". Oh F*ck. I hadn't filled the dashpots nor put the pistons back in, hence the earlier picture. They looked as good as new after they had been (almost) straightened with a trolley jack handle and a pair of pliers! And Mike and Rich even managed to put the bonnet scoop/fresh air thingy back on.

The  return journey was uneventful. I now have faith in the Beast to take me on any (short) journey. I now even go home from work (when sunny) the long way. The temp gauge still sits nicely on half.

Saturday 30th July

The 12th Malvern Classic Car Show and Classic Ford Day (including Capripower National Day  at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern) is tomorrow, so I gave the Beast a good clean, polish, wax, hoover. I also stupidly opened the bonnet. I really shouldn't be allowed under there.

 I topped up the water and oil and unscrewed the carb damper pistons from the carbs and went to get some oil. Which I didn't get as my memory is going. I returned and closed the bonnet. And put the Beast back in the Beastport.

Wiring, Thermostat, Needles and Clonking

Best part of another 2 days spent in the garage this weekend. The needles went in. I presumed that the carbs wouldn't need fiddling with again as the seats, mixture and idle screws would not have moved. I now have high revs. Although still with the choke pulled out. It's all still very wrong at low revs though. So it's the timing then? Or is it simply time to set fire to it?

The new thermostat is now in. I took Lionel home which is probably about 0.2 miles away. The temp shot up to just below 3/4 again. Even with the fans on. And with plenty of water in it. So that didn't work either.

Lionel's main mission this weekend was to get the tacho working. After many hours of stripping the trunking, exposing wires which didn't go anywhere and trying to wire up the old dashboard, it was found that: the wire from the tacho to the coil wasn't wired up; that it is never going to work unless an electronic distributor is fitted; and the SD1 ballast resistor is needed because the TR7 tacho runs off 6v not 12v; and that a brown and white wire that was going nowhere is for the oil pressure warning light.

Paul reckons that the teeth sensitive metallic clonking noise is because the rear diff has got no oil in it. We shoved it over his pit and found the diff bolt plug. It was rounded off and stuck. Something fcuked on this car, what a surprise!

T R D C

Monday last, the boys at the club suggested two things that may be the cause of the spluttering: timing and needles. The needles thing was because big K&Ns suck in lots of air and thus the needles need to be tapered to compensate and thus flush through more fuel. Another £20 "investment" required ...

Tackling the coil springs

So, one of the MOT failures was due to the springs popping out of place when the car is jacked up. Solutions that have been suggested include using garden twine to hold them in place, cable ties or a clamp and bolt set from the likes of Rimmers, although SprintMan fromn the TRDC has suggested that these don't work.

Enter Paul. And his seat belt idea. Get 4 seat belts, cut off the bit that anchors the belt to the car body and join them together to make 2 straps. Whilst the spring is in it's I am about to fall out position, measure the shock and drill holes in the body to attach the strap too. The other end will fit on the bolt that holds on the bar thing that lives by the diff. 

This might help:

See the hole in the top centre? That's the one end.

This weekend, Simon and I also had a fairly good go at balancing the carbs. Paul then strobed the distributor. It doesn't backfire as much as it used to!

Twiddling The Distributor

There wasn't too much time available this weekend for a great deal of playtime with the Beast. I took it out of the garage to make some room for a clear out and had no real intentions to mess at all. But, after revving a few times and shooting even more flames up the road, I decided to have a bit of a play with the carbs - armed with a screwdriver and a bad printout off the interwebnet. I looked at the SUs, had a cup of tea, looked at them again, gave up and then undid the nut holding the disributor in place. A twiddle to the left later and things sound much better! A quick run up R Road was completed without a splutter nor backfire. Groovy! Although between last weekend and this, the fans have decided to stop. Ungroovy!

Catch Up ii

Alright alright, I am getting slacker with the updates so this is for Anonymous (Paul?). Thus, latest news is that due to the cold and my ever increasing lack of interest, I have rarely been in the garage other than to get the odd box of Christmas lager. Two weekends ago, it started nearly first time but was still spluttering very badly and shooting flame up Rosemary Road at any more than 3000 revs.

It was at this point that I armed myself with downloaded images of SU carbs, a scredriver and a Simon. We twiddled the mixture screw right down until the engine died and twiddled a quarter turn until it started again. The plugs were removed and cleaned for the 86th time.

The result was a much better sounding engine that when slightly warm (can't tell how warm as none of the instruments work), ticked over nicely at about 800rpm (probably as the tacho don't work either). At low revs all is well. At higher revs, you still don't want to be standing behind it, unless you have a marshmallow on a fork.

Next? If it starts and runs ok this weekend, it will be insurance and MOT time. The pre MOT To Do List includes: drivers seat screwed down properly, dials working, oil flush and change. The post MOT To Do List will probably be very long.

Oh, and I still have a green leak. F knows where that is coming from. Looks like it's the port on the head. So does that mean a buggered manifold gasket that I didn't change? Or something more serious?

Catch Up

Catch up time then as I haven't reported much recently...

I reinstalled the carbs that Stu had kindly stripped for me and started her up. Things still not very good, but at least it started and sounded better than the last time. Since then, we have gone backwards again - it appears that backwards is the only direction that this s.o.c. likes to go in.

I now have a water leak. A collection of green is pooling on the inlet manifold gasket. There are no splits in any of the hoses so it was decided that the metal pipe (who designed this?!?!) that runs under the manifold must have split somewhere. Nope. Bugger all wrong with it. It's rusty but not poorly.

There was a lot of rusting around the end that goes to the heater so I decided to undo the two bolts. Snap! Coooocccckkkkk! The end of the bolt is now out. I am waiting for Rimmers to deliver a gasket and another bolt before attempting to reconnect the manifold. I am hoping that I have fixed the problem!

Et Voila!

Once again, a big thank you to Lionel as the black dashboard is now in. Doesn't it look pretty! There are no longer any wires sticking out, these are behind a switch. All is now black - the carpets and the plastic bits. The instrument panel must have been knocked during the proocess as none of the dials work. I am hoping that the big plug has fallen out. The finale is a quick vacuum, clean the dash properly and then seat installation. Unfortunately, the engine still wasn't playing very nicely. It would appear that I have a TR7 again as 4 of the cylinders were a bit shy. It was decided that one of the carbs was stuck so off they came to be destucked by Stewart/Stuart. A couple of pictures follow, including the pit crew having a piss take fag break!