Fast Marina Magazine

As a Apprentice one, of the first thing I was taught was when removing the cable barrel, was to screw it back on to the cable when removed. So they never went walkies, something I still do today.
Dave

Very good point Dave! I could make the excuse that my old cable was scrap and I only kept it for making measurements trying to obtain a new one, but that's something to bear in mind for the future

Thank you Mini Spares

NNN is running, MoT test in the morning. I'm uploading some boring low res videos to YouTube of me getting it cracked up and then doing the well rehearsed performance of trying to tweak it. Its been around the block here and it seems good ticking over now, but I'm still not sure about it on the road, initial impressions are its still lethargic. Or maybe I'm just used to a turbo diesel (but I had the Minis!). More later.

Progress

Well done Mick, how did you get on at the MOT station?

That's tomorrow Chris, 11am.

All Together Now....

The Beatles 1967 or The Farm 1991, depending on preference.

The Farm

Well, here as threatened earlier, are links to my videos that I didn't do so much for posterity, but more as evidence of what checks and adjustments I've performed just in case I continue to have trouble with my Morris Marina's performance when it gets back on the road. Neither the video or sound quality is great, because I used my ancient Olympus digital camera because I could mount it on a tripod, rather than try to use a modern hand-held phone camera.

The videos are, in order; 1)the first firing up of the engine since December, with the rebuilt carbs and starter motor (and Kilroy's mod to the starter circuit using a relay), 2)setting the dynamic timing after my initial static setting, 3)balancing the twin carburettors with a German made synchrometer, and 4)having a look at the mixture settings using the piston lifting pins. I chose not to touch the mixture settings because I could not determine any particular change in engine note when raising the carburettor pistons by (supposedly) 1/32" using the lifting pins, though quite how you judge such a small amount of movement on the piston with the engine shaking about is beyond me. What also didn't help much is that in keeping with me not getting all my original bits back from Andrew Turner, one carburettor has a thick lifting pin with an internal return spring, and the other has a thin lifting pin with external spring and circlip (how both my original carbs were) and each one feels slightly different in use. Later in the day I had my friend Dennis come over and after seeing the engine running and looking at what it was doing when raising each carburettor piston by a small amount, he agreed with me that it wasn't worth touching the mixture screws at this point, because they're supposed to have been set the same number of flats screwed down from fully up, by Andrew Turner, with new jets and internals. There didn't seem to be any point in messing that up. If anything the engine DID speed up very, very slightly with a tiny amount of upward piston movement but it really is like trying to split hairs.

If you decide to watch any of these videos you might want to skip forward at some point. They won't win any awards at Cannes. They last about 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 2 minutes respectively. With the engine running most of my dialogue is inaudible. You can hear me sigh and take deep breaths sometimes - I was feeling the tension, especially early on at start-up, particularly after everything that has gone before when trying to set this car up.

Videos then.

First start-up
https://youtu.be/9mi8oVzN-eI




Dynamic timing It started out statically set to 5 degrees BTDC using a Gunson Sparktune to determine when the points had opened. When I'd warmed the engine up and put the strobe light on it, vac tube off, it was showing 7 degrees BTDC at 1000rpm. Someone once told me they ran their car like that to account for unleaded petrol, but the book says 10 degrees BTDC so I've set it by the book for now. The car always seemed to drive like it was retarded too far anyway.

https://youtu.be/WPfS_BLAqxw




Balancing carburettors Not much to say here except that it was quite easy with the German-made synchronometer that cost me about £48. The Gunson Carbalancer is rubbish. I don't know how they have the nerve to sell it. Using fuel pipe to the ear or looking at how high the pistons have lifted in each carb is fine, but this thing gets the balance spot-on as far as is humanly possible.

https://youtu.be/xgEsS4qbRmw




Checking the mixture setting In the end I didn't alter anything here, as mentioned earlier.

https://youtu.be/R6eVGrYqLC4

My initial impressions when taking the car around the block were that it still didn't feel that nippy, though the engine sounded willing when revved up at idle after I'd finished tuning. The real test will be if it passes the MoT, I get my 'free' road tax, and see if it runs out of steam at 60mph like it used to do.

1972TCCOUPE wrote: Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:34 pmThe Farm

It's good, but I'm a Beatles fan

Its having the MoT now as I sit waiting with the phone in my hand. It still isn't right. Cut out on me on a pre MoT warm up run round the block. As I'd said it felt lethargic so pulling out on a side street I pushed my foot down and it just faded away and stalled and started coasting. It then took several cranks to restart it which sounds a lot to me like fuel starvation. Seems to run fine at rest or light throttle. I've put a fuel filter on it which seems half full most times I look. Wondering if i need a smaller one but with 2 carbs and a nearly two litre engine I thought the larger size would be the one to go for. Or is this a sign of too weak a mixture? I removed two plugs (1 & 4) and the electrodes and nose were grey and the area inside the threads lightly sooty.

The good news is NNN passed the MoT, the bad news is Glyn at the garage said it was running like a bag of the proverbial. It only passed because he turned the mixture nuts down by hand to get it through the emissions test as it was sky high. He is having it in next week to go through it and tune it. I have to admit it, I cannot tune twin carburettors. For years in the 80s I'd tune single carb, four cylinder, OHV engines, fit new ignition components, time them, set tappets and I was happy with what I did, I only really stopped when I started buying things like BMWs with overhead cams with shimmed tappets but even so I still did things like fitting a manual choke conversion to a nearly new VW Polo. But I'm throwing in the towel with this. At the very least, if Glyn goes through it and HE can't get it right, he might have some idea what else might be wrong. And if there's anything wrong with the distributor advance curves, for instance, he should be able to pick it up whereas I'm just guessing and feeling for whether the base plate and rotor arm shaft are springing back. I did tell him that I'd been trying to test compressions when the starter motor failed in December or January (reconditioned 2013 by some numpty who didn't bother to rewind it) and I'd thought number 3 looked a bit low, but Glyn said his hydrocarbon readout would have been high if there were low compression issues so I'm hoping all is okay there. Oh, and I was nearly rear-ended by some arse in a speeding white BMW when I came away from the garage, me turning left with a blind sweeping bend to my right, because I couldn't accelerate away very fast after the MoT, the driver then proceeded to hang onto my back bumper all the way to the next roundabout where I did a 180 to go home. People like that should be made to drive Ford Anglias.

Mine being pre 1973 has no emissions test just visible smoke test. Twin carbs do run a bit rich on tick over, if they are leaned off to much as my first MOT guy did, it made it run like a pig. At the time he thought it had to pass emissions. yours is new so I guess 1976 so may still require emissions?

1st August 1979 onward is when cars have to be emissions tested. Before this date it's visual only.