Hello all, I invited a good friend over to watch the Superbowl today and
when he arrived, I proudly showed him my RHD '67 Mk3 in the garage. I
lamented that I still had quite a bit of work ahead of me and that the third
cylinder wasn't firing (as reported here yesterday). Before I knew what was
happening, "Bear" was donning a pair of my surgical work gloves and removing
spark plugs. Sure enough, a large carbon deposit was closing the gap in
number 3. He had me turn the engine over a few times to shoot out any more
gunk that might have been in the cylinder and moved on to the points after
cleaning the no. 3 plug and inspecting the others. The gap on the points
was woefully tight and we adjusted to .015.
By halfway through the third quarter of the game, my friend had my car
running like a top and we had completed a trip to his house to pick up his
timing light and a length of hose to connect to the vacuum advance on the
distributor and the Weber carb to finish the job. I had no idea this friend
new so much about cars. He even helped me fix one of the bad brake lights
on the car and helped me find "4th" gear by angling down with a slight slant
to the left from 3rd. Being a RHD car, I had been trying to go straight
down. Bear left me his compression guage so I can measure the cylinders
tomorrow, but I suspect that all is well since the car now has very spirited
torque. I've set the idle at about 850 to 900 RPM, because anything less
gets my ingnition light to glow.
We still had time to crack an ice cold brew and enjoy the most exciting part
of the Superbowl anyway! It's such a gas to have the car running so well
now!!! The Koni's are handling great -- the transmission is tight and
surprisingly quiet, as is the rear end. I AM THRILLED!
Having friends is a wonderful thing. I'm very grateful to all the new ones
I'm making here as well.
Best wishes,
Jeff in San Diego
'67 RHD Spitfire Mk3 aka "Mrs. Jones"
http://www.ohms.com/spitfire/spitfire.shtml
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