The V8 Owners Forum -

After a slight break I have returned.Sorry the video for the broken engine has gone missing as I shut down my channel hosting it.

The slight break was caused by me building an engine to put under the carbs.Vitesse bottom end with some stock carb heads and the usual 3.9 grind replacement cam.It's all run in and working nicely.Except that when ..............

Yup.The carbs are still playing up. It seemed to work ok for a bit on book settings (for a carb rebuild) as I got the timing sorted after running in the cam and it drove rather nicely with gobs of grunt up to that 3000 mark. And then I tried to tune the carbs into the new engine. Drivers side no problem. Mixture screw lean too much and the revs drop,richen it too much and ditto. But on the other side the moment I screw the mixture screw clockwise from the 1.5 turns starting point the revs rise.And keep rising as I turn the screw.Adjusting the tickover screww until it's off of the cam has no effect lowering the revs and they can hit 3000 before I crack and kill the experiment.It will stall if I weaken the jet.I have been able to set a steady tickover but only before the motor warms up fully.Once warm it will rev away from the tickover set up to it's favourite 1800-2000 point and sit there until it just drops back to tickover.This is with the throttle cable disconnected and the interconnect between carbs off as well.Fast idle adjusted properly,or a bit slack if anything).Just a pair of carbs operating independantly on tickover with zero physical inputs one of which revs the engine seemingly at will,or randomly at least.

I've got a logic block somewhere. The throttle disk isn't a gas tight seal with the stop screw all the way out.There are a few points of light that squeeze around the edges but it's the same on both carbs and the disks were out of the packet.This should restrict the airflow so much the engine will stall and it needs to be opened a turn or so on the idle screw to tickover. So where's it getting the air from to suck that fuel inside when I richen the jet with the butterfly closed ? I can't work that one out.I'm told that the air draws the fuel out of the jet as the air pressure drops above it but not much air is getting by the throttle disk when it's revving up.But somehow by enrichening that carb I can get the revs up way past the point of comfort.Spraying WD40 all over during the revving makes everything stink of WD40 and nothing else.

I am at the point of junking this set of carbs and maybe the manifold (I could do a manifold swap I suppose but I can't see where the problem might be).I'm looking at a complete replacement Weber kit from RPi for a bit of mental relief.I've looked at the birdsnest of wiring on the EFi set I have on the shelf and really don't fancy that much despite the benefits of fitting it.It would mean ripping the exhaust off for welding and experimental wiring stuff, which I normally do in the winter.I would much rather drop something on that works properly on it from the start and go bloody driving for a bit rather than fault finding without finding the fault.

Last ditch attempt this morning was to replace the copper washers on the manifold take-offs and blanking plug.It didn't work.I'm stumped.

Have you looked as the fuel flow past the jet at idle with them both set approx the same mechanically? A decent torch will be needed. Might give you a clue if it is very different. There must be extra uncontrolled air getting in somehow. Are they solid discs or fitted with over-run valves?

BTW, the standard EFI system, but with a MegaSquirt ECU, works very well indeed, and since you have most of the bits I'd guess would cost a lot less than a new Weber carb and manifold. And I'd say much easier to tune yourself.

I do know the benefits Dave,and can see the attraction (fuel costs). I'm just a bit miffed at the minute with all the work I've put in to be for nowt.It's called sulking I think.

Brand new disks from Burlen with overrun valves in them.I tried flat disks but they jammed stuff up in the linkages.The carbs both look the same when ticking over and set up with a flow meter to be balanced.Throttle response is pretty good and driveability too but the hanging/sticking/sucking/leaking/other throttle makes it undriveable.

I had a bit of a read up on Megasquirt a while back,and did a bit of rough pricing up,and it seems the Weber conversion and Megasquirt are in the same ballpark.I'll maybe have a check back on that score as I have a mate with experience of it (he built his own from the boards up). I'm about done fiddling with it currently. This has been going on since the turn of the year and it's dragging on and dragging me down now.So a drop on kit that doesn't involve drilling the exhausts for sensors or a rewire on the old Land Rover it's in (1966) in which the wiring loom is what I'd describe as bush mechanic interesting. A carb set up would be more in keeping with the old bus too,although I've always wanted a rootes blower like the old hot rods had I must admit.

I'm wondering aloud here.

I've just checked/rebuilt/factory set the carbs for the umpteenth time and this is still happening and it appears like a valve opening as the engine hits normal running temps.And the way I got it set up to drive is so fiddle-with-it that it ran weak on the 250 mile drive I took it on.Got hot a bit too obviously.The rebuild has been with a friend as overseer (only has 4 v8 Rover engines).

So,has anyone heard of a cracked manifold messing up the mixture on one carb ? Or some other valve like air leak appearing when hot ?

I've got other manifolds here available to try but it does seem like a bombproof bit of casting. But as my wits have also gone on holiday I'm just about at the point of insanity as I still have a 250 mile drive home to do.

My first guess would be an over-run valves opening when they shouldn't. I similar - but not so bad - problems on my P6 3500S. Some solder them closed. I fitted plain discs.

Check that the inlet manifold is tightly screwed to the heads. It's quite easy for it to come loose and leak air.

Chris.

Dave, you were spot on.Very early in the post as I see.Emission valves.

I decided to get it running and take it for a 250 mile run to my mate's in Devon.Where there are a lot of V8s just hanging about all over the place. It ran like crap whenever I slowed down (hanging throttle) and ran a touch weak too (not a surprise as I couldn't richen it at all).

So under strict supervision I stripped and rebuilt my carbs and refitted them.Exactly the same result.Sanity checked though.

Fitted a spare set of HiFs with the emission flap soldered shut.Didn't change the weird jets (red trumpet shaped) but had to flip my vacuum chambers on it to get it to run ok.No idea what needles are in them as they have been previouly gorilla'd and the guides are pretty firmly stuck.The needles didn't fall out though.The throttle levers are slightly different leading to even more of a frankenmonster throttle linkage,but it was perfectly and controllably adjustable and the throttle didn't hang any more.It drove very nicely on the way home.Even though it was a nine hour drive.In future in heavy traffic I'll drop to low ratio and keep the revs up to help the water pump do it's job.

So it seems my carbs were factory fitted with the legendary Rover totally variable random throttle mixture control system (analogue).And very soon they won't be.

Last thing to do for true sanity is to solder my valves shut and stuff them back on,just to make sure, but it seems that it was the emissions valves all along.What a lovely engineering solution that little gem turned out to be.And I'd read about it being a problem.And discounted it as being the problem what with them being brand new out of the packet valves.And Dave said it sounded like the problem.

Good job I like soldering stuff.

Thank you all for your help and support.It's been emotional.But the sound on the overrun now makes it all much less painful.

On my P6 some 30 years ago, I couldn't get the idle slow enough for my tastes. Rather than solder them up, I changed the discs to plain ones. But in those days, would have been genuine SU spares. These days, can be difficult to know if anything is re-manufactured to OEM standards.

I tried a set of solid disks from an old set of HiFsomethings that came with another engine.Unfortunately,due to their lower overall height they messed up the geometry between the various levers and just jammed everything up.That was fun finding that out.The only new disks I could find for the HiF44s were all fitted with the variable tickover poppet valves.I suppose Burlen could probably supply the correct part if I knew the part number but I've got several different solders and various interesting ways of applying it so.......

Anyhow,after about eight months of chasing this particular gremlin I've learnt a lot about the SUs.And poppet valves.I may even try the exhaust gas analyser on it when my carbs go back on.

Easiest way to solder them is over the gas ring on your cooker if you don't do much soldering. Or a blow lamp if you have one. Get some multi-core for end feed fittings from your local plumber. If you can find leaded, so much the better. Clean the bits the solder has to stick to with wire wool or whatever - nice and bright. When it is hot enough, the solder will find its way all the way round easily.

Thanks Dave.

I have all sorts of soldering hardware laying about,from a hot air station for tiddly electronics up to a stonking 100W iron and of course some blowlamps.Numerous solders laying about too,mostly with lead in,some way too big for such a little job. I've soldered wires to individual pins on computer chips before and soldered up plenty of copper pipes but prefer hitting things with hammers or setting them on fire nowadays.So blowlamps it is.

I've already tested a couple of ways of doing it on the old disks and the easy way is the best.

Must adjust my wheel bearings too.Steering has become more important all of a sudden.

I recently bought two solid discs from Burlen, WZX 1321, 8.18GBP each