The V8 Owners Forum -

Guys long story but this car was garaged 14 years ago and has had nothing done to it in respect of storing it. Car before storage had a few issues that I was working on and got side tracked due to lack of time. It was never runing correct from day one, but only put 200 miles on it since purchased. Car has 9:35:1 on the block and twin HIF SU's, KN cone filters and a new tubualr manifold that I fittted as the old one was blowing at the welds.

Started her up on Saturday and immediately could tell that it was rich and was greeted with an overflowing left carb. And not running on all cylinders. Done compression test and were all between 150 & 170 psi so not bad there.

Took carb off and it was full off a waxy deposit in the float chamber. Cleaned this up and cleaned inside of carb and piston etc. Put back on car and now it is fine ie no overflow and fuel pump turns off when up to pressure. Decided to give the other side a clean and this was not as bad. Connected all back up and started the car, it sounded much better all 8 firing. However the right carb which was in much better shape is not respoding to mixture adjustments. Left carb which was in a poor shape internally is right about spot on using the lifting pin test. When lifted the engine almost dies. So guess lean, so could be air leak or perhaps float level is not set correctly but should I still be able to wind a bit more fuel in? ANyone got any pointers thinking spray with WD40 externally on the carb and if idle chages then it is not seated correctly perhaps, any other top tips? Note also had the needles out, perhaps I did not put that in correctly is this possible? Other thing that I remember on the right one was that I had to rotate the top of the bell of the carb when I put it back on could I have loaded the spring and caused these symptoms? It was later last night and just had to put it to bed so couldn't check obvious. Also I know this will be for latter but the needles in there are BAK given that it has the K&N and the "performance" manifold are they in the ball park as the car never seemed right after fitting the manifold.

Cheers Guys

Hi
if it were me I would first pull the carbs back off the engine and strip and clean them as thoroughly as I can, very lightly pollish the insides of the bells and the bore the piston slides up and down in there are very few drillings in the SU, but make sure all of then are free of "fur" (oxide) strip the throttles off the carbs and clean where the shaft goes into the carb, if it has the poppet valves on the throttle plates either replace the throttles of solder them shut, replace the jets and needles for new and then reassemble. Make sure they both lift freely (by hand) make sure the springs are the same! then set them up properly, checking firstly that they have the correct springs in them they should allow the pistons to reach the top of their travel about 350 to 500 revs before max revs for the engine, if you don't then no one can meaningfully recommend any needle. BAK is probably a good starting point but it is only a start! A lambda metre, a stop watch 3rd gear and a hill will let you get it dead right.
Best regards
Mike

Will have another look at the right hand carb. Dont want to throw any money at it as where it is I have to move 4 other cars and empty another garage to get it out on the road (but have to sort brakes first). What direction should the bias of the needle be? Something tells me this may not be correct. If I can get it to at least be responsive to mixture adjustment I will then look into sourcing some parts from Burlen. Got another car on the go from an extended layup that also needs some minor attention that is in a position where it can get out the garage and has just been passed MOT. But I like the V8 even though the other care is 450 520lbs 1986 vintage.

Carbs are all clean inside think it was an assembly issue

Will of course let you know how I get on.

Update

Found the problem. The rocker breather had become un-braised where it attaches to the rocker cover on the right bank. On the left bank the breather is blocked off not sure if this could cause a separate issue? Will take a photo to show what I mean.

Car run fine with snappy throttle response for around 5mins with it held into place. However it then started to misbehave promise I changed nothing . I noticed that the left bank card was slightly wet around the mixture screw despite having not touched this screw at any point. So I then had a tweak on the screw to find it does not move the jet. So carb is off again for investigation.