All right! Now. As stated in my previous post, things had been running pretty smooth for my little car. It was now Winter of 2006-07. Throughout the winters, I try to drive the Midget for at least a half hour once every 2-3 weeks. I do this so nothing freezes, so gas doesn't clog up in the fuel lines, and so the battery doesn't die or anything. As I always say, a happy car is a car driven often.
So during one of these winter drives, I noticed that my gas pedal came loose from the linkage. As I pressed down on it, it was very wiggly and finally it came loose. Better this than the brake pedal, eh? So I thought this would be an easy enough fix to try on my own. And it was. I simply assessed the situation (broken linkage between accelerator pedal and throttle cable), bought a new pedal and link, and replaced the old parts. Good as new!
So bursting with old love and new confidence, I decided to next tackle the previously mentioned, failing carburetors. Any other amateur mechanic would have no trouble doing this, and most other mechanics might have attempted to rebuild the carbs. I was not comfortable tackling a rebuild, and paying someone to do one cost as much as new carbs, so I opted for the new carbs. At $600 a pair, this was BY FAR the most expensive part I've ordered for this car.
This was quite the adventure. First, I removed the air cleaners so I could get a good view of the carb setup. I then took many many pictures from many different angles so I knew how to put everything back together. I am really glad I took the time to do this.
I then removed all the fuel hoses, springs, the throttle cable, and the choke cable. Then as I unscrewed the carbs themselves, I carefully removed the linkage between them. This linkage will prove to be a bit more difficult when re-assembling. Each carb had gasket residue on the side they went into the intake manifold. (The side we can't see on the photos above). It went carb-gasket-spacer-gasket-heat shield-gasket-intake manifold. The second photo above was taken with one carb removed. That black thing is a spacer. Dad said I should probably replace all these gaskets, which seemed like a real good idea. So I ordered 6 gaskets, some nuts and bolts, and the springs. Aesthetically, I should've replaced the heat shield with a nice new one, but my old one was still serving it's purpose well. I don't need a show car. I proceeded to scrape the gasket residue off the carbs and the heat shield (which took quite awhile), got my dad's approval (he said I did a great job!) and looked toward re-assembling.
If memory serves me correctly, re-assembly went pretty smooth. I was doing all this at my dad's second garage, so when I had everything in I asked Dad to come up to look it over before I started her up. He said it looked fine and we put oil in the top of the carbs and I started the car. I think it took awhile for it to start. When it did start it was running extremely fast. We tried to adjust the carbs (the nuts on the bottom adjust the mixture of gas/air and the idle screws adjust the idle speed). Nothing doing. But I had an appointment already set up with Ragtops and Roadsters in Perkasie for inspection. So I asked them to tune the carbs as well. The appointment was two days after my inspection expired.
Well, this is when things went bad. I got a call from them saying that they couldn't adjust the carbs properly because their was a vacuum leak at the intake manifold- cylinder head connection. A vacuum leak makes it impossible to adjust the mixture since it's pulling in air from somewhere it shouldn't be. However, this didn't need to be addressed for it to pass inspection. I had them do only those things that needed to be done. This included replacing the master brake cylinder (by removing the PDWA valve(?), replacing the seals, bleeding the brakes, and adjusting the rear brakes); fixing my non-working reverse lights (this was apparently a great undertaking, I paid a lot in labor costs); and installing a battery hold down. So after paying over a thousand dollars for inspection and $600 for the carbs, I still had a poor running vehicle. But at least we knew what had to be done. Or so we thought.
So we had to fix this leak at the intake manifold. This, of course!, involved taking off the air cleaners, my new carbs, the heat shield...and everything I just went over. When I got to the intake manifold and removed the bolts, the cause of the air leak was obvious. The ends of the manifold are flanged where the bolts go in, and a good chunk from one these flanges had completely broken off. This certain manifold was not available from Moss Motors or Victoria British. Even if they were, they'd be quite expensive. So my dad and I went over to his cousin's home where he was nice enough to solder the piece back on. He made sure it was flat and level and even. We promptly re-installed it. It was very difficult getting it to fit into the exhaust pipe at the bottom. (Around this time we also installed an exhaust hanger strap so this exhaust pipe wouldn't bounce around). I put back on the shield, gaskets, spacers, carbs and air cleaners. We fired her up and guess what. It still ran like crap. The idle was very fast. We spent a lot of time messing with the mixture adjustments, recruiting help from the internet, one of my manuals, and my Uncle Greg. At some point, my dad borrowed a smoke machine from an acquaintance. Basically, this thing blows white, harmless smoke throughout the entire system so it was easy to spot air leaks. We connected it to the rear exhaust pipe and we didn't really notice anything blatantly apparent. Some smoke was blowing out of some spots that were "breather" holes or spots that were suppose to bring in air. Their was a tad coming from the newly installed intake manifold, but I was convinced that it was fine. A lot more would be coming out if it was problematic.
SO, one day when I was messing around with it, David came over and started looking it over. Him and my dad adjusted the timing because we hadn't yet addressed timing since the new carbs. There was little improvement. He then suggested to try installing the old carbs. I was now a pro at this, so I went ahead and did so. And I'll be darned if the thing didn't run great. So the problem was obviously with the new carbs. David was looking at the new pair and noticed that the butterfly disc (that pivots to let in air) on one of them didn't shut all the way. There was a 1/32" (if not less) gap. He took a screw driver and adjusted the screw so it would shut completely when closed. I removed the old carbs and reinstalled the new ones and boom! The car ran great. My dad and I were ecstatic that we found the problem but aggravated that it was something so simple. You'd think you'd get a properly inspected part for $600.
At this point, I was able to schedule a "drop-in" appointment with Ragtops and Roadsters to fine tune the carbs. I met with Rick and watched him adjust the carbs, and after about 20 minutes, the carbs were tuned. To this day, they still seem to be perfectly balanced. I am glad I asked them to do this. Below is a shot of the new carbs completely installed.
So that's that. We're just about caught up to the present day now. This carburetor fiasco was resolved in May 2007 and I haven't had a "real" problem with the car since then. Last month I was told it wouldn't pass inspection unless some items were taken care of, but I think I'm being taking advantage of. More on that later.
I'm excited today because my dad and I finished some work on one of the rear leaf springs. I took it for a short ride tonight and it ran like a dream. Vroom!
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