Maintaining your SU Carb
My new engine will use the carb that was on the Metro, a HIF 44, I've already brought a service kit so I plan to overhaul it myself. I've been looking for a supplier of bits for SU carbs for a while and I just found one.
Burlen Fuel Systems
http://www.burlen.co.uk/ are a one stop shop for all your SU carb needs. They seem to have spares for all the SU carbs and can fully restore your carb to concourse condition. You can even buy brand new carbs if your wallet is deep enough.
Labels: Carb, Carburetter, HIF 44, SU
Should I upgrade the camshaft as well?
I'm trying to decide if I should upgrade the Cam to the
Swiftune SW5-07 . I've heard excellent things about this camshaft, and it sounds like a good performance upgrade without being too
lairy. This car will be for road use and I can't see me needing to race it.
As ever with decisions on this car, money plays a part. When I took the engine out I discovered I've got work on the front suspension to do. The rubber donuts have collapsed, I struggled to even get my jack under the car. It's all extra expense and money is tight. I've got to consider the performance/pound that a new cam would give me.
On the other hand, the engine is already out so now's a good time to change it.
Progress (Slow)
I've stripped some more of the block down, there's a lot of muck on that engine! Brought some engine
degreaser to start
attacking all the grime that's built up over the years. Once it's clean I'll probably give it a coat of paint.
Labels: cam, camshaft
Cheap Inlet Manifold
In that excellent book
Tuning the A-Series Engine by David Vizard
he has a long discussion about ways to improve the inlet flow of the A-Series Engine. He tests many different manifolds, providing detailed analysis.
It turns out that the Manifold on the metro is pretty good, not the best but a big step up from the standard Mini manaifld. In fact the MG Metro manifold can be used unmodified, as it's seperate from the Exhaust manifold.
My manifold was from a standard metro, this is cast as a single unit so in order for me to use it, I've had to cut it off. It's a bit of a fiddly job a combination of grinder and hacksaw did the trick. So it doesn't interfere with the new LCB a certain amaint of tidying up is necessary to remove the remains of the cast iron that joined the exhaust and inlet manifolds.
It is possible to use the exhaust manifold as well, it also flows pretty well. You would almost certainly need to seperate the exhaust manifold from another casting as I don't think it would be possible to seperate the manifolds without damaging one of them. One other advantage of using the Metro exhaust manifold is it can
reduce noiseLabels: exhaust, manifold
Life gets in the way
My mini is still in the garage waiting for some attention, well to be more precise an engine.
The car was moved to it's garage prison soon after the gearbox failed. I quickly brought a Metro with a 1275cc A Series engine in it as a temporary replacement. My wife was not too impressed, whoever styled the Metro was not thinking of the image
conscious when he put pen to paper.
My intension was to do an engine swap, that was some time ago.
The good news is I had an enjoyable weekend in the summer removing both engines. The eyesore that was the metro was removed by a nice man with a big grabber arm on his truck, (Great Toy!!).
The bad news is the project hasn't got any further.
Free time has been my biggest problem, weekends seem to get soaked up with stuff. The stuff isn't necessarily bad, infact it's excellent quality stuff and normally involves entertaining my young daughters.
Things have got to get moving again, I need to hear that 1275 fire up.
Labels: engine, family, mini
UK Classic Mini Parts
I've just added a link to
http://www.ukclassicminiparts.com. The prices look good and I found the quick search the easiest way to find what I was after, it does what it says?
How to damage yourself servicing cars.
This happened to me as I was changing the front discs on my renault megane.
The first set of discs and pads had been changed with no problems. so I confidently went over to the other side of the car with my axle stand and wheel nut spanner. Unfortunately the last time the tyre was changed the car mechanic, who must of been a 20 stone gorilla had done the wheel nuts up so tight I couldn't budge them. Not to be beaten I really leant into it and put my full weight on the spanner, this was to be my downfall. The spanner slipped and I fell nose first onto my axle stand. I was lucky I'd not broken it, but it did swell up and the bleeding took most of the day to stop. Hey you live and learn.
Well, other people live and learn, you'ld of thought that I'd make an effort to look after the nose after that. I went back to the car the following day to finish the job off. My wife had piled the tools into the boot the day before so I opened the boot to get the stuff out again. Sadly my nose got in the way again, and collided with the corner of the boot as I was closing it, reopening the wound.
Personally I blame my genes, the Tyrrell family are renowned for the size of our noses, rivalling concordes. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise
when it gets involved in an accident!
What's been going on the last couple of months
I've not posted for a while so here's a quick catch up on what's been going on with my mini's.
Sadly I've not found time to even go near mini number 2. It's still sitting on the drive looking sorry for itself. Hopefully it will get looked at before the summer. I'm not too worried about the challenge of getting it MOT'd before Steve's Herald and Chris's A35 as neither has made any progress. Chris has infact managed to go backwards as his A35 is currently being used as a log store!
The MOT was due for E232 WMA at the beginning of January. This is totally the wrong time of the year to be working on cars, way too cold. I knew that I had to replace the track rod ends so I decided to get that sorted and put it in for it's test.
No real problems were encountered changing the ends. As I was replacing them I didn't need to worry about protecting the thread as I was splitting the ball joint. I counted the number of turns it took to remove them to make live easier when putting the new ones back on. I should get my tracking checked but the handling has not been affected.
The car passed it's MOT on the second attempt. I needed to replace a tyre. I consider myself lucky. There were quite a few advisory items to get checked out over the next couple of months. I'll post about them another time. I've now got a 12 month ticket so I'm happy.
Apoplogies for any spelling mistakes. I'm posting this from my pocket pc wth my 6 month old daughter asleep on my lap.
Austin a35 with an A Series Engine beats Jaguar
The A Series engine has a lot of potential especially considering it's age. Rae Davis at Goodwood's Motor Circuit Revival 2004 illustrates what can be done. Have a look at this
video clip (WMV File 1,899 KB) of his A-series powered A35, I especially enjoyed watching all those big lumbering Jags being left for dust.
For more infomation on this A35 go
here..
Thanks to Chris for these links, I wonder if his A35's will be as fast when he gets them on the road
A Mini Is Reborn!
I'm not the only person who's having fun keeping a mini on the road. Have a look at Charlie's blog
A Mini Is Reborn!
