Re-Assemblin'

Today I got some bad news at work which will probably mean a change of employer (again) so became quite despondant. To cheer myself up & to stop me thinking about it, I picked up the four new ball joints from Euro Car Parts & went on to the excellent Margnor in Jacobswell to get some bolts for the gear change. When I got back I re-built the gear selector (on the kitchen worktop - I am a bloke after all),

Then I set about the suspension, that all went without a hitch as I'd cleaned & prepared eveything, so with the car back on it's wheels. I went back to the gear selector.

The selector shaft itself comes out of a tube in the main body that looks for all the world like it should have a gaiter on it to stop the crud entering the selector body. I thought about it for a while & found some large heat shrink which went over the selector UJ & was then shrunk down onto the body & tyraped in place, then I shrank just the other end & tyapped that onto the tube. I think it'll be too stiff & crack, but we'll see - it'll be no worse than it was before.

I could've re-fitted the linkage, but by now I had had enough of being under the car, so tidied up & was about to go in when I was distracted again, this time by the throttle linkage.

It's horrible, it feels horrible, it looks horrible, it hasn't got enough travel on the pedal - which slides about sideways on it's pivot, I don't know if it's worn like that or was just made by a half-wit.

The car pulls quite hard (ish) when you push the throttle, but doesn't pull any harder the more you push - not that there's a lot of push to be had because there's not enough travel on the pedal .

The car came with a spare carb, googling the Weber part No. revealed nothing but a few for sale, I resorted to a screwdriver based investigation & found the large bellows on the side that I'd taken to be a damper on the second choke butterfly, was in fact internally connected to the venturi, so when there's a lot of suck going on, this bellows opens the second throttle. BUT (& this is crucial) the butterfly is mechanically held shut at all except Wide Open Throttle, so if as I suspected the main butterfly was not being fully opened by the horrible horrible linkage, the second choke won't get to strut it's stuff. Really the linkage needs a full re-design starting with the pedal, but I applied a few tweaks & re-adjusted the cable & I think I now have a reliable WOT, the pedal feels a lot better - not like the cable is about to break - but until the new polybushes arive for the gear linkage I can't even start it because it's in gear.

I expect it'll make no discernable difference at all, but it feels nicer to use.