The Webmaster Zone

Lots of news to share, on Friday I spent the day working on the car. I got permission from my landlord to use an outlet in the underground parking garage where I work on my car, so I purchased a long extension cord and a mechanic's light so now I can actually see what I am doing! Before I was using a flashlight, trying to illuminate my work area while holding tools etc, very frustrating. So that makes my life a lot easier. I pulled the rocker cover to find out why one of the tappets is making so much noise. Examined one of the adjusters on the #3 cylinder tappet that I had a bit of trouble with before - it was very tight, so I readjusted to 0.015" and tried to tighten the adjusting nut. Stripped! I pulled off the nut and thank goodness, the adjusting screw was alright (you can only take them out the bottom) but I had no nuts so I had to change and take the bus out to Octagon Motors and get a new nut. Gotta hate it when you have to run around for a 50 cent part. Came back, installed, set the clearance and replaced the valve cover. Replaced the fuel filter, the old one was, well, old and blowing through the end it seemed quite restrictive. Who knows how old it was. I re-checked the points gap and set the static timing by using my trouble light in series with the wire from the coil to the dizzy. Then I screwed up my courage, and tackled the carbs. Following Roger Garnett's SU Tuning Guide (available below) and the Haynes manual side-by-side, I synchronized using an old toy stethoscope I had, changed the mixture, tested, and repeated a whole lot of times. I finally got it just right, the problem is I can't get the idle low enough! This week I'll look for air leaks again, I think that may be the culplrit - and it may be as easy to fix as replacing the intake manifold gaskets. I replaced the air filter and float bowl gaskets, they were very old. It was idling at around 1500 r.p.m. at this point (6 hours or so after I began the day's activities) so I reassembled and went for a test drive. The tappet noise was gone, thats good... seems to have power. The exhaust note didn't sound the same at all though. Checked the plugs quickly for an indication of the mixture, looks good so I'm off down to Seattle. Halfway down and my left front tire self-destructs. I hate changing tires on highways with trucks blasting by! Glad I had the spare - however there is a tear on the sidewall of the spare where I removed a very large screw and I know now that prolonged driving is going to chafe the tube and give me another flat, so I take it easy and it holds out the rest of the drive to Seattle. Drove around all weekend on it actually, but once I was in hilly Seattle I really noticed that I had no power, and also that the car was generating a lot more heat than it should! I checked the plugs again, a nice tan colour so I decided I must have got the timing wrong. Turned the dizzy c.c.w. and that made it worse, so I turned it c.w. and bingo! Power is back. Guess I somehow had it retarded... it will be nice when I have a proper stroboscopic timing light, then I can check to see if the tach is accurate as well. One down! The hole in the bottom of the expansion chamber in the exhaust got a lot bigger on the weekend, the car sounds like crap now. Bottomed it out one too many times in my Trip to Hell (a.k.a. Squamish) couple months ago, now its caught up with me and its time for a visit to Octagon to get the center section replaced. On Sunday, I took the spare off, removed the tire and tube, sure enough the tube was starting to crack near the puncture in the radial. Patched the tube just in case, and put a patch on the inside of the radial to protect the tube and reassembled. Should be good enough for a while, I've got to get all new tires all the way around soon anyway. I'm thinking I will try and true the wire wheels I've got and get them sandblasted, then paint and clearcoat; I'd love minilite replicas but I have to be realistic, I don't have the cash right now. It seems the wheel that blew was unbalanced because with the new rim on, no more wheel shake at 100+kph! Bonus! Never content to rest on my laurels, I have all the parts I need to rebuild the front brakes so thats my goal for this week. Hopefully the chrome pistons will not need to be replaced. Should be f-u-n, stay tuned!