Yesterday afternoon I very carefully cut the new split pin down to size, bevelled the end and shaped it a little with the pliers. With plenty of WD-40, trial alignment and I’ll admit holding of breath (!) I gently tapped it into it’s new home with success! Such a relief!
The actuating cam seems to be working well and I’ve almost fully reassembled the rest of the carb. It’s been a bit of a journey, and that’s without trying to put them back on the car and tune them.
I’m working a bit next weekend but I should have time to finish the reassemble and remount them next weekend… fingers crossed!
Things were going so well with the carb refurb and then I made a series of really silly and compounding mistakes. One carb is fully assembled and when working on the second, without realising it, I put the spindle in 180 degrees out from how it should have been installed. Then when attaching the fuel pump actuating cam, which requires knocking a split pin through the cam and spindle, this jammed.
Rather that take a breath, reflect and make a sensible decision, I departed on an a course of action which has turned out costly. The split pin jammed with about 3mm protruding (I’m not surprised now as I don’t think it would have every gone through with the orientation of the spindle incorrect). This was fouling on the inspection cover plate and prevented reassemble the carb. At this point, I didn’t think the issue with the orientation of the spindle was any big deal as I couldn’t visualise how it was causing the carb to not function properly. So, rather than be sensible, I ground off the excess split pin so it was flush with the collar of the actuating cam allowing me to close the inspection plate and finish the reassemble.
Turns out this was a silly thing to do. With the spindle 180 degree out, the arm of the actuating cam was not lifting the fuel pump high enough for it to work properly. I noticed the difference in the height of the fuel pump when I had the two reassembled carbs side-by-side. The job of this pump is to literally spray fuel each time the accelerator pedal is pressed, this helps the engine get going and create the Venturi effect to draw in the rest of the fuel. Without the pump working fully there would be less fuel reaching the engine on initial acceleration and I suspect that this would serious impact performance.
The spindle had to come out again but this can’t happen without the actuating cam coming off and this was firmly attached by a jammed split pin! The solution was always going to be destructive! I tried drilling out the split pin using a cobalt drill bit but that metal was about as tough as any I’ve come across. When this failed, I then tried to cut away at the collar and leave the spindle in tact. This is how well this approach worked:
I’m afraid it didn’t at all! I ended up having to cut all the way through the collar and spindle. Pay day tomorrow and almost £100 of car parts with VAT and delivery (and I suspect an import charge too). Stupid mistake to make, but at least I haven’t done anything to the carb itself. There was always a chance I would slip when cutting… very relieved that didn’t happen!
I suspect it will be a few weeks before the parts arrive. Hopefully I can get everything back together and on the car with a basic tune. I’ve identified a local(ish) garage that can tune Webers using a rolling road. Would be good to get a horsepower number as well. Something to look forward to as this episode hasn’t been my finest!
Most of the parts have now arrived and the carburettor reassemble is underway! I’ve updated the carb page with the progress.
I was planning on buying some shot blasting gear but unfortunately my daily drivers was vandalised at some point between the 30th December and early afternoon on New Year’s day. I suspect this was a parting gift from 2020, it has been on of those years! Anyway, the misguided person manages to smash my windscreen, scour some of the other glass and snap off both near side door handles (with associated damage to the surrounding body panels and paint work). Going to be an expensive repair. It’s interesting though that my biggest frustration was that because that car is on finance this means I can’t attempt the work myself!
So I had the SuperSix out at the FDMC Brooklands autosolo at the weekend. Mixed fortunes.
The weather was rubbish but I seem to drive faster the wetter it is! Here’s a link to the first three runs:
Quite pleased how hard I pushed on the third and final run.
I was placed 3rd in class (out of 7) and 9th overall (out of about 50ish I think) at this point in the event. My last run was on the pace and certainly in touching distance of the faster drivers.
The whole event has started to slow down and I was seeing the cones more quicky… I’m a bit more confident with the ‘right foot steering’ which is needed with the limited lock too.
After a promising start the curse of the fuel flow struck again! Lumpy acceleration upto about 3,000 – 3,500 rpm with the engine being starved below this. I felt I really had to retire the car so that I had chance to limp it home (actually not limp it… needed to keep it around 4,000 rpm!).
I very much suspect that I have rubbish in the carbs and this is nothing that a good clean out won’t fix. I’ve added stripping and cleaning the fuel system to the winter tasks!
Here’s a pic of me and then the car in front of a bit of the remaining banking at Brooklands:
The car is certainly off the road for winter work. Problem is that real work is manic at the moment… 60 – 70 hours a week the norm so progress is likely to be a bit slow.
Because I want to spend a some time under the car (I want to replace all of the fluids including the gearbox and differential oil) I built some wooden car stands.
I tied them up a bit more but the picture below will give you the idea.
Last week was the first MOT pass! A bit close on the emissions and the hazards developed a fault on the way to the test centre but really pleased.
Next weekend is the last autosolo (at Brooklands) and today I did 300 miles to the south coast and back. After this is time to put the car off the road and start to get stuck back into the jobs.
So I managed to get the car to another autosolo a few weekends ago.
The solo was held at Abingdon Airfield and organised by Farnborough District Motorclub (FDMC). The section of the runway we were using clearly hadn’t been used by anything for quite a while as between the tarmac slabs that make up the surface there were loads of weeds… some almost 2 feet tall! Not so much of a problem except that as the day when on we tore up the weeds and mud which combined with the drizzle and a bit of oil to create and ‘interesting’ surface. Really good fun though and I had a hoot despite the fact that with no windscreen I got very muddy!
I drove much better at this event than in the last. Whilst I cut down on the mistakes frustratingly on second test I had two wrong tests which resulted in me carrying a penalty into the leaderboard putting me in the bottom half. I need to cut the mistakes out! I think I also should have had the award for the most embarrassing wrong test. On the first run I just had a brain burp and missed out a third of the circuit!
Eleven of the twelve runs are captured in this footage including all of the silly mistakes:
My last run was the fastest and, in typical fashion, the memory card was full so I didn’t capture it! I was only about 2 seconds of the pace and pushing quite hard. No wrong tests after lunch either. Lot’s of positives.
A couple called Ash and Emma had their first solo at Abingdon. They’ve captured a blog style video and I make a cameo appearance at 14:03:
At the end of both solos I’ve developed a hesitation in the throttle which feels like something to do with the fuel system. I can feel a carburetor service coming up!
We’re off to caffine and machine for breakfast… I’ll grab a few pictures and put another post up soon.
So yesterday was my first foray in to ‘competitive’ motorsport (not that I was very competitive!). In case people are not aware of it, Autosolo is a relatively new discipline and takes place on a 200m x 200m tarmac area and you race against the clock through a slalom set up with cones. The cones are set up in different configurations (called a test) and each test is raced 3 times (with the best two times counting). Each cone hit is a 5 second penalty and if you go the wrong way then this is called a wrong test and is a maximum penalty (fastest time plus 20 seconds I think). Cars race in 6 classes with mine being in the fastest ‘F’ class.
Passed scrutineering… should look happier!
I can’t tell you how quickly the cones come up and how confusing it all looked to start! The first test I got two wrong test penalties, the next two test one wrong test and the final test none. The first test effectively put me to the bottom of the leaderboard because I carried a maximum penalty as one of my two fastest times. It did start to slow down though as I got a hang of where I was going, and how to remember the many turns, my times came down. I developed more confident in the car as well as the tests progressed.
Queuing up for the first run.
Good times were in the 60 – 65 second. I started in the mid-80s for the first test which dropped to high then low 70s in second two and then the last test was 60s with my last run being the fastest at 66 seconds. A few of the corners were so tight that I didn’t have enough steering lock to get round and not enough bravery to throw the back end out… next time! I think I would need to play with the setup to loosen the back end next time. We started in the wet and it dried out towards the end.
An action shot.
The car was great and didn’t overheat once. Picked up a small fuel flow issue (I think) on the way home that I’m sure won’t take long to fix. I couldn’t run my GoPro as it was a ministry of Defence site but someone did grab a few pictures of me in ‘action’. The amount I’m aching this morning is an indication of how much fun I has yesterday!
So, I’ve been out and about a bit in the car which has involved a few firsts. I attended my first kit car club meet. I’m a member of the North West Kit Car Owners Group (NWKCOG), the Tiger’s Owners Club and now Farnborough District Motor Club (FDMC). This kit car meet was a little bit of a liquorice allsorts as it was made up from members of a few different clubs getting together, in a socially distant way, near Aylesbury.
We then headed in convoy to a national forest where there’s a decent cafe where we were joined by a few other cars.
As you can see the weather brightened up considerable throughout the day. This was fortunate and I’m still running Toyo R888s which I feel need a little heat in them to work properly. It was certainly a bit sketchy on the hours drive up to Aylesbury! We broke up into smaller groups and headed out for some spirited country lane driving. I forget to pack my camera so I don’t have any footage.
I mentioned that I’d joined FDMC, top group of people so far and I’ve been encouraged to sign up for my first motorsport event. An autosolo at the end of July. Autosolo consists of racing a very tight course of cones in an area no bigger than 200m by 200m. I’ll likley be hopeless but I’m sure I’ll have fun. I have some stuff to do to the car to get it ready and compliance with the regs. I’ll add a page on this sometime in the next few days and share how supportive FDMC have been.
I was out this weekend stretching mine and the Tiger’s legs (in a socially distancing compliant way). I found a tunnel… couldn’t resist taking this video 🙂
I noticed as well that the race tracks are starting to open back up again. Hopefully not too long before I can post my first track day video!
Spent some time today installing a new USB port to replace the 12v cigarette lighter. This will let me charge my phone to keep googlemaps charged up when we can finally get out and about. Did quite a bit of wiring which wasn’t needed because I could reuse the connectors from the existing 12v socket. At least I got to practice my soldering and learned that I need a battery powered soldering iron rather than a gas burner (I have the blisters to show!).
Tim’s Tiger blog 