Smoking Banned

With the car SORN’d it was time to tackle the smoky idle. The Fury doesn't smoke - it's a new engine for goodness sake, so I was surprised & perturbed when the MoT man approached me during the last MoT & said "your car's a bit smoky", I wandered through to the test are to find the whole place FILLED with blue smoke!
It passed MoT, & the smoke cleared after a brief post MoT blatt, but it's continued to smoke whenever it's been left to idle for more than a couple of minutes. So, with the car on SORN it was time to do something about it. I'd thought long & hard about possible causes & had come to the conclusion that all the years the engine had spent in it's crate with the top of the engine never seeing oil had dried the valve stem oil seals & in the absence of any better ideas I was just about to order the seals, new head bolts & a new head gasket – literally just about to press the “order now” when I thought I’d ask the SKCC forum again & this time Dick came up trumps, “perhaps” he said “one of the butterflies is fully closing & the vacuum is drawing air up from the sump? Suddenly it all made perfect sense.

So when I got into the garage I took time to understand how all the linkages worked (each throttle body drives the next in one direction to open & from the other direction to close. I carefully adjusted all the many many linkages, then re-balanced the airflow in each & suddenly there was no smoke, sometimes it was difficult to tell because of the steam (it is November & very damp), but the smoky smell has gone, so I think that’s it cured. Hoorah! This morning I started it up from cold & it started on the button & ran very sweetly indeed from cold & again, no smoky smell..

Phew.