Put in a lot of hours this past couple of days, getting somewhere but its slow progress!
Spent ages, and I mean ages carefully removing the old gasket from the aux housing and block, especially because you dont want any debris into the oil ports, wouldnt be a good time!
20251006_114903323 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Cleaned up the sealing face for the refurbished waterpump to go back on as well
20251006_122211893 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Waterpump back from PNM, I must say how great it is to have guys like PNM, SJ Sportscars and LotusBits that have so many parts and the enthusiasm to keep our cars on the road, so big shout out to them. Waterpump was only a day before getting shipped back fully tested
20251006_122158098 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Installed the waterpump, used blue Hylomar on the gasket as a little bit of insurance against leaks. Used some nice flanged stainless bolts
20251006_160623290 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
As you can see, the Aux housing/oil pump all rebuilt and back on. Just put the gasket on dry for this, didnt want any possibility of rogue Hylomar or sealant in my oilways
20251006_160604816 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
I managed to get the car to start after this which was positive! Obviously no coolant hoses connected at this point but it started but ran pretty rubbish. Later found half of this to be that I'd forgotten to block off the vacuum take off ports from cylinders 1&4
In order to get the coolant system put back up I had to re-install the powersteering pump as it is used to set the tension of the waterpump belt. But, I have a leak on my powersteering system. So luckily the barbed fitting from the steering rack (returns to tank) is the same thread as the output from the pump fitting, so I just looped the output from the pump straight back to the tank, this prevents the pump from running dry
However, as you can see in the photos, there was a plastic piece melted into the barbed fitting, which would likely cause over-pressurization in the powersteering system and cause a leak, anyone know what this peice is? Just a sealing ring?
20251007_101210909 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
20251007_101220593 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Again, I havent taken any photos foolishly of everything now its all back together, but you'll have to take my word for it for the time being!
I bought a carbtune 4-way manometer for setting up the carbs, so now the cooling system was back together I could see about making the engine run as it should. Well, this has taken hours and hours, and more hours. I hope somebody can give some advice here because I'm pretty well scunnered!
The long and short of it is that I just cant get it to idle without dying. Cylinders 1, 3 &4 plugs are a little sooty, so a bit rich, but cylinder 2 is pretty lean. When you give it a rev and its falling back down the revs cylinder 2 draws much more of a vacuum. The car also gives quite a few misfires and pops coming down the revs as well. I have set the float height as procedures state, and then lowred the height a little further just in case it was letting some droplets through and that what was causing the backfires.
Because I cant get it to idle, the carbtune isnt very useful at al because you dont have a vacuum with any throttle open, but as soon as it closes it dies. I have reset all idle mixture screws back to 3 turns, removed the anti-tamper covers for the air bypass and these are all closed, I think the only one that was 1/4 turn open as found was cylinder 1.
I wanted to check that there wasnt a stuck inlet valve or tappet so lifted off the cam cover, I had new gaskets ordered anyway as I suspected these were leaking, and were covered in silicone
As you can see, the cams are in fantastic shape which is a real relief, The valve buckets/tappets are also is brilliant condition with a nice even shiny finish. Cleaned up all the old silicone off the cam cover and head, and put the new gasket on dry. Seems to be not leaking so far
20251007_151402735 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
20251007_151356621 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
After having some time to think about the carb situation, if the plugs are sooting up, and wont idle then its not getting enough air (a high idle is usually indicative of an air leak), so I think I'll try screwing out all the air bypass screws 1/2 a turn or so and see if that helps as a starting point
As my ethos surrounding the recommissioning of this car is to first of all make sure the engine is good. If the engine is toast the project is done, I'm not spending £2-3K on a new engine for a car that isnt in the best of shapes paintwise, its just not cost effective to spend that money on this particular car. SO along those lines I dont want to progress with sending the money on suspension, brakes etc until again I know the engine is okay. So I'm at a bit of a conundrum, because the engine, aside from running poorly because of carbs, seems in healthy condition. Oil pressure is good, no nasty rattles or knocking, no blown headgasket (I was worried about this when I'd found the blocked coolant pipe that it had cooked the engine)
So whilst mulling in my head whether to go ahead and start on the suspension & brakes or keep going and try to have the engine run smoothly I turned my attention towards the lights.
The issue is, dipped beam doesnt work, but the flashers do, and the headlights also dont go up. So I wound them both up manually and when I reconnected the battery the passenger side light flipped down straight away. Then I still had the problem of the headlights dont go up when I put on dipped, but the left hand side goes up and down when you flash!
Removed both headlights, swapped the 3 relays in the headlight area with the 3 inside the car as these work (I think), still the same. I was getting 12v to both motors but I wasnt sure what all the cables did. Swapped the motors over and the drivers side still didnt move, I guessed there must have been some sort of position switch inside as the always stopped in the same place, so I stripped the motor down to see what I could find. As you can see, a bit of corrosion on the contacts.
20251007_205126173 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Put my meter across the common and the closed contacts and got nothing, so the contacts obviously had some corrosion on them preventing them from conducting between each other. Took some 400 grit sandpaper and cleaned the rivet and the back of the plate until everything was conducting. Put it all back together and wrapped in self amalgamating tape, its not pretty I know, but hopefully it seals some of the water out
20251007_212541662 by
Martin Gunn, on Flickr
Went for a final test before I went home and the drivers went up instead of down, and down instead of up, and the passengers side didn't move at all. SO I called it a night and went to bed, another problem for another day
20250908_111400277 by
or it might have been Tanz.
. The water pump doesn't have any studs - they are all bolts. Very lucky to get that one out - well done!! The vibratory polisher looks great - I need to do some research on those 
