Monte,
Congrats on the new paint job.
My '77 was similar. I made the same changes you made(to the Z/S)
but also went to a manual choke - never could really tell what that
diss-similar metal coil spring was doing...
I like it much better because that I can control what it is doing.
Another change I made was to lower the needle by removing the tiny
pin and pinning it further down. I may have used a paper clip or something
to make a small dia. pin. The reason for this was to try and get the needle
adjustment into a leaner range. The Zenith seems to be set up very rich.
Also make sure you seal off all vacuum leaks.
Another item to check is the vacuum advance. My vacuum line runs
through a solenoid valve that only allows vacuum advance in 4th gear but it
was hooked up backwards allowing a loss of intake vacuum thru the valve.
I'm planning to change over to some other carb set-up this winter
even though the Zenith is running well.
Have you seen this John Twist web site?:
http://home.att.net/~allens_gifts/zenithstromberg.htm
Good Luck,
Dennis Luther
'77 MGB "Samantha", who bewitched me
-----Original Message-----
From: MonteMorris [mailto:mmorris@nemr.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2003 11:29 PM
To: MG list
Subject: high fuel consumption
Monte wrote:
Just and drove it 44 miles today and it used 3.75 gallons. Less
than 12 mpg! A year or so ago I checked it and it was getting 23 mpg. It
seems that it may have been using more fuel last year when I started
stripping it down for the paint job.
It still has the ZS (with water choke), which I throughly cleaned and
replaced the diaphragm on last fall. The choke starts the car as it is
supposed to: fully depressing accelerator before starting engages the fast
idle; kick accelerator and it idles down. I disconnected all the pollution
control last fall; took off air pump, plugged the four ports of the air
injection manifold, and removed the gulp valve.
I pulled the air piston off the carb and the needle base is flush with the
bottom of the piston.
I'll start going through the list on page 85 in Moss this week to try to
determine the cause. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to chime
in.
Can you disconnect the water choke somehow and run without it to see if the
problem lies there?
Thanks,
Monte
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