<VV> Surprise surprise

[Hugo Miller]

Well, I took that abomination of a carburettor to bits & cleaned it - 
and not only does it now idle smoothly, but the detonation has GONE. It 
must have been running lean throughout the range. It wasn't running on 
the idle jet, but you could hear it come in quite clearly as soon as it 
came off idle, so I assumed the rest of the carb was working ok. 
Obviously it wasn't. I am genuinely surprised that a simple weak mixture 
would cause that amount of detonation, and I am equally surprised that 
simply cleaning one carb would cure it. But it has.
I have a four-carb 140 motor I'm going to rebuild, and I plan to adapt 
it to take a couple of proper carburettors - good old British 1.75" SU's 
- one on each side. Better than those Rochesters with all their 
complicated levers, metal tubes with holes in them, flap valves, 
accelerator pumps and goodness knows what else to complicate matters. 
Just one jet. That's all you need. Engineering elegance!
Just by way of background, this flurry of activity on my part is due to 
the fact that I am FINALLY getting round to rebuilding one of my '64 
convertibles. It's a California car, beautifully sound, but mechanically 
less so. I've owned it for a couple of years but not really used it - 
I've been using another '64 convertible for a hack, which is better 
mechanically but not so good body-wise. I've done maybe 100 miles over 
the last couple of years in the California car. But now I'm getting 
stuck in to it good & proper - I've re-painted it Cascade Green with a 
red interior, fitted proper wire wheels, done the brakes (including 
fitting a smaller bore master cyl to reduce pedal pressure) & am 
currently looking for a convertible top in red to go with the interior.
I've made tremendous progress over the past few weeks but will probably 
go quiet for a while now, as I have to go to rainy old England next 
week, as my cat is still there and she is missing me.