Spent the day looking at the engine. I don't know much about setting up timing and fuelling so I spent a lot of time reviewing the videos available on the internet and eventually had enough of an idea to give it a go. The most helpful was the series by James (of Resto Nation fame) which I studied extensively.
I started by looking at the timing and then moving to the carbs. In all the years I have owned MGs and the like I have never tinkered with SU carbs and it was really interesting to see the effect small changes made. Following the step by step guide James provided I got the engine running really well, I am delighted.
I am also delighted to discover that the overdrive works. With the prop shaft removed I had the car running in 3rd and manually pushed the lever and got it to engage. That is fantastic news as it means that now I just need to sort the electrics out and I can do that at my leisure. I refitted the prop shaft the correct way round this time and started to size up the tunnel cover before running out of steam.
I did have a couple of challenges along the way, one of the float chambers decided to pump petrol out of the overflow for some reason but a quick strip down and blow out sorted it. Also, after the first hot run I was walking down the garden path to get a fresh coffee when I heard a massive bang and turned round to see steam coming out of the garage door. The floor was saturated and the car covered in water. At first I thought it was a core plug but it turns out that the radiator hose had popped off the water pump. Soon fixed but the mess produced lives on.
Getting much closer to a drive now, very excited. The Ace Cafe has a classic car night two weeks today and I would very much like to be there, fingers crossed.
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