Progress, progress, progress

It’s been a really productive few days helped by some unseasonably warm weather (back to cold now!) and the easing of the lockdown restrictions meaning I’m comfortable in visiting the garage.

The carbs are now back on the car with the new fuel lines cut to size.

Somehow I managed to lose a top cover bolt (you can see it missing on the top carb in the righthand image above… it’s on the righthand side of the new, blue fuel line). The replacement bolt arrived today.

I have bought a flow meter to measure the air intake of each trumpet so that I can balance the carbs and have a pretty detailed guide to follow on setting the idle speed and mixture. One of the helpful gents from the Farnborough District Motor Club is also going to look over my work when I’ve done it.

I can’t start her up through until I’ve added the missing bolt (easy) and sorted out the flexible connections at the rear of the car. There’s three things I want to do at the back and they can all be seen in this picture:

Just to help locate, this imagine is taken just forward of the fuel tank and inside of the near side rear wheel and it shows the fuel pump.

I want to replace the black fuel line (which on this picture looks a little worse for wear), make sure that the fuel pump is properly secured (there are some holes already drilled which might take a bolt or I’ll fashion a bracket), and finally you can just see the spade connectors on the positive wire. The mechanic I took the car to for its initial inspection was a little unhappy with these. He was worried if they came lose when they might create a source of ignition near the fuel tank. I’m going to add some heat shrink tube over the connectors to help ensure they don’t come apart accidently.

Once I’ve done this bit of work I can fire her up and get on with the tuning.

When working on the carbs I’ve also replaced the high density foam on top of the bodywork which supports the hood.

You can see in the picture above that it was lifting away and was really unsightly. IT took a bit if elbow grease to get all of the adhesive off but now looks much better (compare in the pictures above)!

I did discover this though under the foam:

There’s evidence of a botched fix already. It’s nothing too problematic as it’s only in the bodywork. I think I’ll stablise it with some expanding foam and then fix it after this year’s driving season.

The eagle eyed will also spot that the exhaust wrap is gone… it was well past its best and starting to disintegrate. Once I’ve got the engine fired up and running again the exhaust manifold is coming off and I’ve already got the new (black) wrap ready to go on.

I’ve also wanted to deal with a few cosmetic and ‘ease of living’ issues. I’ve replaced the indicators with new LED units. In the process I’ve extended the length of the wires to make to the nose cone easier to get on and off (hopefully it will be more on than off over the summer!).

the number plate has constantly been threatening to fall off! Quite frustrating so I’ve fabricated (a bold word!) a new bracket out of aluminum that will allow me to bolt and stick the plate.

Just waiting for a little warm weather so that I can spray it black before mounting it on the nose cone.

I have some other bits and pieces on order too… a new rear view mirror, some gel coat repair kits and I have just booked into a dyno in mid-May!