Help. I am having the toughest time getting the carbureters on my '74
Midget in tune. 2 days back, I decided to take the carbs off of Smidgie and
give them a thorough cleaning/examination. Well, the throttle spindle and valve
were well worn so I replaces them with much less worn ones from a spare carb f
that came off of a 67 Sprite. Also cleaned out the muck from the bottom of the
float chambers and double checked that everything was up to snuff. After making
sure that everything was a-ok, I decided that today was the day to refit those
archaic babys. They slapped on no problem, gave the engine a turn and vroom
vroom, a lovely choke and sputter that sounded nothing like the putputput
from before. Damn I thought, I guess the carbs are out of tune. I spent a good
four hours trying to tune up the car, using a Hayes manual but the state of
tunage only got a bit better. The car idles semi-smoothly with puffs of black
smoke comming from the tail pipe. When driven under load (above 2500 or so)
the car backfires like a son of a gun and sputters and generally drives like #
$#%@! Ah yes, the backfiring also happens at idle, but not all that frequently.
I checked the timing/distributor/plugs etc. and all were fine. The car was
driving nicely before the cleaning (yes I know... stupid idea to mess with
anything that is working) so I am assuming that the problem lies in the carb.
>From the smoke, I am also assuming that the carb is running rich, but when I
try to adjust the mixture, the smoke sticks around even when the jets are all
the way up. Well, I'm hoping someone out there in net-land has any suggestions
for a not so bright but well meaning british car lover who just couldn't keep
his mits off of something that I was almost satisfied with.
Noah Glassberg
nglassbe@bu.edu
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