|
October 2002 Sunday 6th Finished tidying the wiring at the rear of the car and refitted the fuel tank. Fitted the remaining scuttle-to-bulkhead screws. Bled the brakes. The pedal feels quite firm and the brake lights work! Filled the cooling system with a 50% antifreeze mixture and filled the engine with oil. After all that, I realised that everything was in place to start the engine for the first time! I fitted the exhaust silencer to the manifold. I disconnected the plug leads and turned the ignition on the pressurise the fuel system. After a few seconds, I could see fuel in the fuel filter, but a few seconds later fuel started poring out of the carb breather and filling up the inlet ports, yikes! I turned off the ignition and started some head scratching. I sent an e-mail to the bike-engined-cars Yahoogroup and the general consensus of opinion was that the valves in one or more of the float chambers was sticking. I read the carb section in the Haynes manual and was ready to dismantle the carbs. However I was going to be off work on Monday, so I thought I'd wait and give Ian Gray at ST a call before I did anything. Monday 7th I phoned Ian Gray and he also suggested that the float chamber valves were probably sticking, but his solution was more direct! He said that whn carbs have been sat for a while, the old fuel gets 'sticky'. As the carbs had been left overnight fuel of new fuel, they would probably have cleared out. He suggested priming the carbs, disconnecting the power to the fuel pump (to prevent more fuel spewing out if the carbs were still sticking) and starting her up to see what happened! This I did, and the engine started first time! I let it run for a few seconds and turned it off. I then reconnected the fuel pump power and started it up again and let it idle for a few minutes. Everything seemed fine! The Stack was showing the revs correctly and reading between 2 and 3 bar oil pressure. The temperature reading was showing zero, but this turned out to be a loose wire on the sensor. Once connected, I ran the engine until it reached about 65 degrees. As the car is on axle stands, I put it in gear and checked that the speedo was working. The calibration is a bit rough at the moment, but it seemed to work and I got up to 17mph! So, everything is looking good for SVA. startup.mpg - 1,157KB |
|