First Date in the New (old) Car

The interior is basically finished now upholstery, carpets, even seat belts. I had no idea how hard it would be to do the upholstery. No more driving around sitting on the floor or with the seat just thrown in the car.

 With the interior done it was time to focus again on getting the weber dialed in. I spent many hours setting and resetting the adjustment screws to the default settings while trying different jets, but I could just not settle it down. It was always running rich and rough. I finally did get it fixed with the help of Chris and his crew at Harold's Garage. Those guys are magicians. It appears the float was set too high and the choke was never fully closing. They had to soak the choke unit until it cleared and fully closed. Then they called me to pick it up Thursday morning. Chris said they had been driving the car a lot. He commented on how spirited the engine was and said what a great time they were having driving it. He told me both he and his mechanic had big smiles on their faces. I think they were as happy as I was that it was running so well.

I covered the car with insurance over the 4th of July weekend and was able to drive it home Thursday afternoon. I did take the long way home. Friday evening Lori and I took a ride down to Wine 30 for our first date in the car in ~33 years. It's been a long road to recovery for this little car. But it is absolutely a gas to drive. Thinking back to the million or so times I checked the cam setting so it was advanced exactly 4 degrees (4 degrees is about 1/32 of an inch on the timing gear) and all the other meticulous checks and modifications that went into the engine, and to see it all come together and work really right is just incredible. Here are a couple of videos. They are really compressed due to Blogger restrictions.

 

Things still to be done. The paint still needs to be cut and buffed. Need to buy new tires. The Michelins are 33 years old. They look great but rubber that old cannot be trusted for more than a few miles. Need to add bumpers and all of the trim pieces once the cut and buff are complete. There re also a few electrical glitches to work out. But with British cars, that is an ongoing issue.