25/9/2001 - Rolling Road Tune Up

Although I have been able to go out in the car over the last two weeks it has been running a bit rough to say the least.

On pulling off the car would accellerate cleanly up to 3000 revs then it would hit a bad flat spot and splutter etc. If you then floored the accelerator pedal to open the second choke it would pull quite fiercely once it hit 4000 revs (up to about 5500 revs). A trip to the Rolling Road was in order and today was the day.

The car was taken to Pete Burgess Engineering in Alfreton and after a few hours I got to road test a different car to the one I took in!

OK I didn't get any breath-taking BHP figures but the car now pulls cleanly from low revs right up to the mid 6000s. No coughing or spluttering.

Pete did a great job. He checked the cars electrics (distributor, leads, points etc), replaced the worn distributor cap before moving on to the fuel system which we all suspected was the problem area. Dave from the RS Garage was there also and rolled his sleeves up to strip the carb down so that Pete could re-size the jets to provide more fuel.

Only then did Pete run the car at speed on the rolling road. Big nerve racking though - watching a car you have spent the last seven months of your life working on screaming it's tits off at full revs on the dyno!

The dyno only showed about 60 odd BHP (which translated to about 84 at the flywheel according to Pete) but the good news is that the car is now decent to drive and pulls like a train!

Thanks to Pete Burgess and Dave for a cracking job. Another one to recommend!

Now that it's running fine I'm wondering whether I should swap the diff. Currently it's got a 4.1 which, whilst giving good acceleration, means a low top speed and a noisy ride on faster roads. H'mmm I'll think about it.