Getting There

 There was another dissapointment this week when I took the car into work & 1/2 way thee it lost power - & it hasn't got a lot to lose!

It was one of those horible thing where the engine will idle or scream at full throttle but nothing inbetween. I wrestled it into work & decided some dirt must've got in the carb so it would run on the idle jets & the second venturi.

I left work at 15:00 to avoid the traffic, but it was a lot better on the wy home - not good, but better. I took the jets out & cleaned them, put them back in & took it round the block - it was mech better. I wen home & set up a camera for the Welsh trip, took it out to get some footage & it was back to how it was again.

Back home & I noticed the central post on the distributor cap for the HT lead had a clean bit around the plug, could it be the plug wasn't pushed in properly? It seemed unlikely but I gave the lead a hard stare, it's a yard long & falls right down to the gearbox before coming back up to the distributor & there in the middle -right down in the depths of the engine bay it was wrapped in insulating tape "here we go" I thought.

Sure enough, on unwinding the tape, the insulation on the lead is cut right trough to the conductor. There's a new set of leads on order.

Having pushed the central plug right on, I took the car round the block & it was much better - until suddenly it wasn't. Not the HT leads then.

So the carb has come right off the car (four attachment bolts weren't tight) & had a good clean with all the little drillings I could get to squirted through & all the diaphragms I didn't change in the week replaced. There is quite a large heap of stuff the carb now hasn't got. A choke butterfly & all the linkge, the "throttle kicker" & all it's linkage has gone & there's some more bits I couldn't identify that weren't doing anything in the heap as well. On fitting it back onto the car I found the gaskets that came with the carb refurb kit are the wrong size, fortunatly the carb came off without harming the old one.

The car started up OK & a run round the block suggests it's mended, but who knows. I need to take it out for a few runs over the weekend.

In other news, the seat belt had been a pain, either not retracting, or more annoying, locking solid & not extending. Some inertia reels I've seen are adjustable for locking angle & sensitivity, so I took it out of the car & this one isn't, but excercising one of my favourite mantras I thoght about the non-retraction & asked "what actually is the problem here" & realised there was far too much webbing wound onto the spool - why? because the Fiesta it came from had the shoulder mounting high up on the "B" pillar, the Quantum hasn't got a "B" pillar, so there's about 2ft too much webbing. At the bottom it just loops round a steel rod bolted to the floor, so I took it off that, pulled it under the seat & attached an adjuster from the redundant rear seat belts & bolted that to the front seat mount so that absorbs the excess webbing, the belt is all nice & free with no kinks or folds & what's left retracts. I carefully tightened the bolt where it extended most easily.

What amazes me is that this car has been like this for TWENTY YEARS. Did these things not irritate previous owners enough to do something about them??