:: Thursday, April 12, 2018 ::
I have a car show on Sunday with the Sporting Bears. Time to get the Chevy ready after its winter break!
I take off the cover and give the car a good wash, then spend twice as long again getting the whitewall tyres anywhere near white.
Then I check the oil and water levels and tyre pressures.
Everything seems in order, so I go for a wee run, ending with refilling it with fuel at the garage just down the road and driving home.
:: Sunday, April 15, 2018 ::
I've spent bits of the last couple of days just getting the car ready - a bit of polishing, a bit of cleaning (especially the interior) and generally just sorting stuff out. Then I packed up the Sporting Bears stuff yesterday, ready for an early departure today.
Except it doesn't start. It's turning over, but no go. I connect up the jump leads to the Range Rover for a wee bit extra oomph, but still nothing...
Pull off the main ignition HT lead - there's a spark.
Disconnect the fuel hose at the carb - yep there's fuel...
So why you no start?
I don't have time for this temperamental American pish, so I transfer my stuff over to the TVR, and go in that instead. Nae starting problems there!
:: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 ::
Out to the car today - faff around for ages with various tests, but still no start.
There's fuel, there's a spark, I put brand new plugs in, still no start... I don't have much time though so I'll have to come back to it later.
:: Thursday, April 19, 2018 ::
I'm an arsehole. That might not come as news to those who know me, but believe me, it's true...
I tracked down the problem. You see, I spilt some fuel while checking the fuel pump, and 30 minutes later, it was still there. Shouldn't petrol evaporate quicker than that? I put down a splash of petrol and that disappears in 5 minutes, the original stain is still there...
The main lesson today is that 50-year-old American V8 engines don't run on diesel. They get you half a mile home while they're hot and the carb bowls are still fill of petrol, but after that - zilch.
I put in 40 litres on Thursday, to the brim - so there must have been around 15 litres of petrol still in there.
So it's back to the long-forgotten art of syphoning fuel out of the tank and into every other container that I can find - a 20 litre jerrycan, three 5-litre fuel cans, a couple of other 5 litre containers, and a Range Rover (where I hope that a litre of petrol in a full tank won't do any harm).
The final 5 litres or so is extracted into a vacuum pump that you use for draining oil out of dipstick holes (or coolant out of Cerberas).
Total 57 litres out of a 60-litre tank.
Then I connect the syphoning hose to the fuel pump outlet, and crank it over until the fuel line is empty.
Then I remove the air cleaners and take the top off both carbs, and use the vacuum pump thingy to empty both float bowls and the last bit of fuel line into the carbs.
So, with the system as empty as I can get it, I load a 20-litre jerrycan of petrol into the tank (getting 20 litres of petrol when you're only allowed to fill two 5-litre cans in a petrol station, is another story) and then flush that through the fuel pump by cranking the engine until there's no diesel left in the lines - I don't want the carb bowls filling with the last remnants of diesel!
Moment of truth - it cranks a bit while it fills the carbs, but then bursts into life! Its smoking like a lab beagle at first, but that settles down a bit as it warms up.
I go for a wee run to warm it up properly and brim it with petrol to dilute the last of any diesel. It seems to be fine!
What an arsehole though, eh?
That's the first time I've ever misfueled a car, and fortunately, it was the one that is easiest to clean out afterwards. The TVR I could have coped with, the Porsche would have been a nightmare, and the Range Rover would be in many many pieces by now (whether as a result of an intensive repair, or an explosion, I can only speculate).
No permanent harm done though, except to my credibility...
:: Sunday, April 29, 2018 ::
The car has been going, although it has seemed a wee bit hesitant, with a bit of a misfire.
On Wednesday, I changed all the spark plugs again, back to the Autolites that were in it when I got it. The Champion plugs I bought are a wee bit too cold so they foul up unless you're revving it everywhere. I also found a loose plug lead that might explain the misfire eh?
The outsides of the plugs were also soaked in oil, running down from the valve cover gaskets, which really didn't seal right the last time. I buy a pair of new rubber gaskets (the ones with the metal inserts) and install those. First I clean the inside of the covers and spray them and the top of the gasket with adhesive - leave them to dry a bit then stick the gaskets to the covers.
Then I wipe off the head faces and install the covers, this time using the lugged hand-tightened bolts, rather than the allen bolts and spreaders I had before. Apparently you only need spreaders on tin covers, not the alloy ones I have.
Then I jack the front of the car up so that I can get underneath, and use an engine degreaser liberally, on everything! I hose it down and start the engine to dry it off a bit while I put my stuff away. Then I decide to go for a wee run to blow the rest of the water off (and to see if there are any leaks remaining).
Half a mile from the house, car slows dramatically - the engine is still running but there's no throttle response. I coast to a stop and lift the bonnet to find that the throttle linkage has come off the spindle of the front carburettor. I manage to get it back on, but I don't have the tiny allen key to tighten it, so I limp back home with the engine running only on the rear carb. To be honest, it still goes pretty well, and realisation dawns - I think it's only been running on one carb since the diesel incident, the spindle has come loose somehow - it was definitely ok then, I was twisting that linkage to check that the accelerator pump was working and fuel was going into the intake...
Today, I looked at it properly and discovered that one of the tiny allen keys has disappeared, so it must have been just hanging on - when I try to tighten it with the one grub screw that's left, it grips the spindle but only just.
I don't know what size the grub screw is - it's either a no6 or a no8, and it might be a UNC or UNF thread. In the end, I order all four variations, which come in packs of 8 or 16 - so I have ended up ordering 40 grub screws, at a cost of £5 or something, to be sure to get the one I need.
When I get them, I think I'll maybe adjust both carb linkages - I don't think they are opening right up before the pedal balljoint hits the bulkhead...
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