Back on the Road, Sorta

[goloch]

Yep, the floats fixed it. While the carbs were off, I gave them a pretty thorough exterior cleaning; there was over 1/8" of grime in parts! Yuck! At any rate, I can now drive the car again and move it to my parents' house where I can actually work on it (stupid clause in my lease...grumble).

The only thing that's got me stumped is tuning the carbs. For starters, the mixture adjustment screw on the rear carb moves much more readily than the one on front carb. Any chance it's not moving the jet properly as a result? Also, I'm getting mixed signals as to whether the mixture is lean or rich. I get it to where lifting the pistons 1/16" doesn't cause it to significantly increase or decrease RPM. The puzzling thing is that it's running rather hot which indicates lean to me (just past N on a 65F cloudy day; used to sit below N in similar weather) but still spitting black smoke which indicates rich. I'm going to start over tomorrow from square one and try to get it as close as possible and was hoping if anyone had any pointers on how to diagnose it.

As for the fuel tank and rust issues, depending on how the IRS treats me tomorrow (yes, I'm a slacker!) I'm hoping to get started on that after the holiday. The floorpan rust is even worse now than in that 18 month old picture so I can only imagine what it's like under the dogleg. I have to admit that I was intimidated by what I imagined the cost to be. Checking the Moss website, it seems like the rust repair jobs are financially feasible if I can get my hands on the right tools and someone with experience to guide me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[R6MGS]

Good luck, you've got you work cut out for ya. Sorry I can't be of much help with the carbs but you might wanna pull the spark plugs for a good indication of whether it's rich or lean.

 

[DrEntropy]

To actually SEE if the adjusters are effetive you could remove the plungers/dashpots/pistons and watch the jets as you turn the adjusters. Once you're in that far, I'd say go ahead and set the jets flush with the bases and do the crude "base" setting before putting all back together. While they're opened up check that "zero" idle (throttle plates "home" with all linkage loose and screws wound away from their stops) setting is really closed at the plates. The Bentley manual is (still) the best info for setting them up.