DAD

New exhaust getting its final welding as we speak, longest I've driven the Starlet with new carbs is 20mins to the workshop. 8 hour drive to Coro from the Wairarapa ahead of me today, am I doing this Nats thing correctly? Anyone leaving LNI this afternoon?

Bit of an update.

Still not running reliably - been busy sorting non-car related stuff over the weekends/evenings. Can get it started now and running but still getting a bit of fuel coming out of the venturis of one carb. Might be as simple as a bit more float tweaking needed, seemed to clear it up on the other carb and there might be less leaking from this one than there was. Don't think I'm going to have exhaust sorted for Nats, so depending how much progress I get next weekend It'll be in one of 2 states:

-Big crabs with standard exhaust

or

-Stock and sad

We'll see...

Oh, in the meantime, got a full set of these from Beaver:

Currently tyre browsing. 175/60/13s are top of my list at the moment.

Lot of potential there for a box of beer. 2zz is a fantastic engine, what rwd boxes will it bolt to?

I love S12s, and yours is coming along fantastically! Shame about the engine, but at least all the fiddly bits of the conversion are done and you just need to swap lumps. Time for a DET?

Thanks for the help guys! Had a bit more of a play today. ajg - is that gasket the triple layer 7k manifold? Picked one of those up a few weeks ago.

Managed to Dremel down the outside of the manifold to give enough access to tighten it all down properly, no more air leak. 

Starts and idles reasonably comfortably (though starts creeping a bit high, will need to work on that), but still leaking fuel from all 4 venturis. Not managed to get it up to temperature yet, the idea of fuel dripping on to hot exhaust isn't one that I enjoy! Top of my list for that is float adjustment - gave them a bit of a tweak earlier but didn't cure it. Will try a bit more tomorrow. If no improvement... I can't imagine the stock mechanical pump would put out too high a pressure for the carbs could it?! Would I need a regulator?

Vacuum advance has no effect at idle/closed throttle on standard 4K setups.

 

It will start fairly easily with any base timing between 0-18 deg BTDC on standard carbs.

 

Wind your idle mixture screw out a couple more turns as being rich won't hurt it. That should help it start when its cold like that, then wind them in until mixture is correct. Might pay to find someone who is experienced balancing twin carbs, I've heard they can be right bastards.

Good to know about the vacuum advance, thanks! Just went out and made the idles a bit richer as suggested and with a bit of coaxing it started! Sounded rough as hell but at least somewhere to work from. From the look/sound of it i suspect I've got a bit of an air leak around the rearmost manifold bolt (tight spot, silly manifold design, difficult to get a good grip on the bolt) so that's the first place to revisit. Also a few backfires through the carbs and dripped a reasonable amount of fuel out of the 4 barrels when I turned it off, suspect mixture/timing causes for that?

(Optimistic) plan was to try to get it into a state where I can drive it to someone to fine-tune. Hoping to try to learn enough to get it in the right ballpark, then I should have a reasonable enough level of knowledge to at least understand where the experts are coming from...

We'll see!

So that all came out pretty easily...

Bit of space to fill now:

Getting there:

I've since swapped the fuel banjos over and routed the fuel line behind the engine, that's all working well, definitely getting fuel to the carbs now.

Went for an optimistic test-(cold)start. Set idles to 2.5 turns from closed, gave it a bit of a crank and met with some mixed results. Occasional popping/signs of catching but no proper start. Not surprised at this really, but need to get to the bottom of it. 
I'm ditching the vacuum advance (have been advised it won't work properly with the carbs anyway) and planning to increase base advance instead. Was working on that when the heavens opened so retreated inside. Could stock timing alone cause failure to catch? I bodged up a temporary mechanism to hold the choke levers out on both carbs and tried with and without that with little difference. 

Help gratefully received!

New to-do list:

Make up throttle cable bracket (easy)

Catch can?

Muck about with choke cabling?

Order trumpets/socks

Get running!

Been a bit tardy with the updates, sorry guys! 

Since last time:

I've moved to a farm cottage down a 4km gravel track. This is FUN, but each ping of a stone bouncing off the bottom of the car fills me with a teeny tiny bit of remorse. I've reconciled this with myself under the justification that this car needs paint at some point in the not-too-distant future, so it'll get the few small areas of rust repaired then, along with some thick underbody protection.

Been driving well, failed it's WOF a couple of weeks ago on rear brake balance (I think Sparkle mentioned the rears would probably need doing at some point when I bought it). I replaced wheel cylinders and shoes on both sides and it flew through a retest, so I'm a happy bunny.

 Excuse the wanky instagram photos.

I've also been gradually working my way down the carbs/extractors route, and have accumulated the following:

-Twin 40mm Dell'orto DHLAs

-Jets that will maybe-sorta-kinda be appropriate for a cooking-spec 4k

-Fiddly linkage bollocks

-Fuel hose

-Inlet manifold

-4/1 tubular extractors

-7k triple metal layer manifold gasket

Should be enough to get me started...

Teaser:

(this was before I put together all the new linkage bits).

Current aim: Have running well enough on carbs to be able to drive up to Nats in March.

Constructive criticism welcomed and valued