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Having come to the conclusion that the Invacar will need the carb pulling for a proper deep clean again I got to having a dig around to see if there's a carb rebuild kit available for this one as it would make sense to me to swap out all the seals and gaskets for fresh ones while I've got it in bits. While this carb isn't showing any appreciable wear anywhere it's still over forty years old so I wouldn't mind at all if I were to spend a bit of extra time doing a full service. Unfortunately the Weber 32ICS10 on here seems to have very little in the way of parts availability out there. The other carb they apparently came with was a Solex 40PID. That at least does have *some* availability...though it sounds like the larger 40mm carb is probably better suited to the larger 650cc version of this engine. After a bit of poking around I did note that that does also come in the same 32mm size as the Weber...and *that* does have decent availability as it's used on early Land Rovers and several PSA models. Hmm...if one of those were to pop up somewhere cheaply enough I might have to do a bit of experimenting. Someone on another forum did link me to something which very much piqued my interest too in this field. Link to a throttle body fuel injection kit for small enginesNow a lot of folks would run screaming away from this sort of idea. There's a few reasons I won't however. Firstly is that I conducted exactly that sort of conversion on my Lada a couple of years ago. There were a few hiccups due to dodgy secondhand parts and a few components being hard to obtain because the donor vehicle hasn't been made for twenty plus years. However once they were ironed out (finding the bug in the ECU design which meant standard lambda sensors didn't work was fun...) the difference to the carb setup was like night and day. The overall driveability of the car was transformed, and you could just jump in, turn the key and go, irrespective of the ambient temperature, it the car is hot, cold or anywhere in between. I reckon we gained a huge lump of mid range torque too. In spite of what the naysayers said, even though several bits were still unfinished and lashed together a year later the system had proven to be utterly reliable once the initial bugs were ironed out. While it cost me a small fortune and trying to track down some parts was a pain (the donor vehicle having both a stuffed ECU and siezed fuel pump was unhelpful!) it was a rewarding challenge to undertake and resulted in a car I was far more happy to use. For now we're just going to stick with the existing carb and clean it up, or possibly swap it out for something similar but with better support. For one thing I'd really like to experiment with the jetting a bit. My gut tells me the standard carb runs things a little on the lean side of ideal. On the plus side, having had the carb off before it was a lot quicker and less annoying job to get to it this time as I knew what contortions and stripping down of the engine bay were needed to get the retaining nuts out so we were left with this.  Still can't get over the size of that oil cooler for a 500cc engine. ...With this rather grubby lump of metal ready for some attention.  When it was previously cleaned I never really put much effort into the outside of the casing, I'll give that a better scrub this time round. Pretty much the moment I started stripping it down it became abundantly apparent that it really did need to be stripped down. This is the state the fuel inlet strainer was in.  With this all dropping out of the recess the above strainer sits in.  While the float bowl looked clean at a glance, there was actually quite a lot of this grit in there too. Into the cleaner it goes.  Will obviously need to be rotated several times before it's finished but despite being a couple of sizes smaller than ideal the cleaner does a good job. The fact that the cleaning solution had after only a few minutes visibly turned darker and cloudy shows it's doing something.  Will get the other sides done tomorrow, blow all the drilled passages out and finally refit it to the car before taking a test drive. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Jul 23, 2020 13:26:56 GMT
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Gotta love an ultrasonic bath! What are you using as solvent?
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Jul 23, 2020 21:38:50 GMT
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Gotta love an ultrasonic bath! What are you using as solvent? I really should have just spent the extra money and got the Goliath sized one and be done with it...as I can see that I'm inevitably going to wind up upgrading this one at some point. I guess on the plus side they still seem to fetch decent money used so long as they're in good order so I should be able to get a decent chunk of the money back. The solvent I'm using here is Gunk branded engine degreaser (so being careful to keep the temperature sensible...especially keeping in mind that over a 30 minute cycle it will bump the bath temp up by 20C even without the heater on!) as it seems to be the best thing I've currently got in stock for shifting greasy and varnishy type deposits that isn't just in aerosol form. The only real downside to it is that it STINKS so the ultrasonic cleaner has to live outside when the bath is filled. Good thing we've got a greenhouse that's never used... |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Jul 23, 2020 23:03:14 GMT
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Put it in a Tupperware pot with the solvent in, that in water in the tank. Squash lid down so it has expansion room when it warms up and doesn't pop the lid off.
One of those tall gallon containers works well, you extend the capability of the bath too, because it can be taller than the bath is deep and still work just fine. The energy passes through the water and plastic just fine.
Then you don't have to clean the bath, just empty the clean water out once you're done.
Phil
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Last Edit: Jul 23, 2020 23:05:31 GMT by PhilA
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Jul 25, 2020 18:35:25 GMT
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Put it in a Tupperware pot with the solvent in, that in water in the tank. Squash lid down so it has expansion room when it warms up and doesn't pop the lid off. One of those tall gallon containers works well, you extend the capability of the bath too, because it can be taller than the bath is deep and still work just fine. The energy passes through the water and plastic just fine. Then you don't have to clean the bath, just empty the clean water out once you're done. Phil To others, this is a great advice from Phil I was watching a youtube video where the guy was using glass bottles with cleaning solvents in and it meant he could have lots of different bottles with the different solvents for different jobs. Also, you can size the bottle/container and volume of solvent/cleaner to the size of the object being cleaned and not waste lots of expensive cleaner on small items. |
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Jul 26, 2020 22:52:00 GMT
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Put it in a Tupperware pot with the solvent in, that in water in the tank. Squash lid down so it has expansion room when it warms up and doesn't pop the lid off. One of those tall gallon containers works well, you extend the capability of the bath too, because it can be taller than the bath is deep and still work just fine. The energy passes through the water and plastic just fine. Then you don't have to clean the bath, just empty the clean water out once you're done. Phil That's a very clever idea... definitely one to keep in mind for the future! -- -- -- One slightly cleaner Invacar carb back in place.  Not sure if I ever posted the full carb details before...so for those who are interested in such things here you go. I had a feeling that the adjustments on this were a mile out as when dismantling it I found that the idle mixture screw was only held in by about two threads. When I put things back together I went with the usual starting point of two turns out (I've generally found that's usually a setting that's close enough to get an engine to run so you can start adjusting things properly). After dancing between the idle mixture and idle speed screw we settled at a reasonable idle showing this on the CO meter.  Annoyingly 1 out of 4 times when you go to open the throttle she will hesitate and spit back through the carb before the engine picks up. The accelerator jet is working and is squirting fuel nice and straight down the carb throat. It's just as though she's running too lean as soon as you try to transition between the idle jet and main. It seems that thes cars were always somewhat prone to doing this, though I don't see that that means that they all *should* do that if the fuelling is correct. Something I've always noticed is totally absent from this car is any form of pops and crackles from the exhaust on the overrun, which always tends to suggest she's running a bit on the lean side. It's utterly unscientific and worth nothing but it's just my thoughts on the matter. It looks like I've tracked down another carb which *should* have the same stud pattern as the one on the Invacar, from a 1100cc four pot so the fuelling should be roughly in the right ballpark (I'm assuming that like air-cooled VW engines these engines probably prefer to run slightly on the rich side). I'm just curious to do a bit of experimenting and irrespective of performance etc, for long term reliability I'd not complain about having a slightly better supported carb in place. It's entirely theoretical at the moment anyhow, will let you know when it arrives and I have a chance to experiment. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Couple of days back a package arrived that I'd actually completely forgotten about...This was hiding in it.   Here's the data tag for those of you playing along at home.  This is a new old stock 32mm Solex carb. It has the same throat size and stud spacing as the Weber 32 ICS carb on the Invacar - albeit with the base rotated through about 45 degrees. So if this stays on the car I'll need to make an adaptor up - not that it will be difficult. Just needs a metal disc with one hole in the middle and four smaller ones at appropriate places. There was nothing really in mind here other than experimentation in the sheer spirit of curiosity. Turned out the most difficult thing to get my head around for an initial test was figuring out how to actually bolt it onto the manifold. The original Weber carb has studs attached to it. This one has two holes to allow it to be bolted down or to fasten onto studs on the manifold. Just bolting it on however was made a bit tricky by the fact that you can't slot a bolt in from the top because the top of the carb casting is in the way. You can't slot it in from the bottom because the inlet manifold itself is in the way. After a bit of head scratching I cut a couple of bits of threaded rod to size and put nuts in both sides to clamp it down. That took me far longer to figure out than it really should have. So what happened the first time I started it up? I wasn't honestly expecting it to even start. This was literally the carb as it was out the box - all I'd done was to blank off the vacuum feed for a distributor advance unit. Apologies for the horrible camera work, you're listening more than watching to be honest though. Well I think that's got promise! The throttle response is immediately obviously far, far snappier. Cracking the throttle open would usually result in quite a gaping hole in the carburation until the engine picks up, with at least the occasional sneeze back through the carb. I think we might need to cobble together a connection to the throttle to see how it behaves under load. The engine this carb was originally destined for was an 1100 I believe, so the per-stroke fuelling rate should have been pretty similar to what we would have been looking for here. Should be an interesting experiment...Initial indications seem to be positive. Hopefully the weather will cool down enough over the weekend that we might be able to do an actual test run. I'll need to figure out whether making an adaptor plate for the base or adapting the throttle cable will be easiest. Annoyingly the throttle cable is about 1/2" too short to reach as it is. I suspect it may well be the base plate. I don't want to invest *too* much time in this at this stage as it's purely an experiment and it's entirely likely that my theory will be completely wrong and it will actually run pig rich under load. |
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Last Edit: Aug 18, 2020 1:32:51 GMT by Zelandeth
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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I *finally* found the long lost trim for the number plate light this afternoon so have stuck that back where it belongs.  It's not perfectly straight, I'll tackle that another day when it's not a thousand degrees outside. Did a bit more experimentation with the carb. Let the engine run long enough to get decently warm to see if any running issues cropped up...still seemed happy. Let's see what the CO meter has to say.  Well that's rather better than I'd expect for a carb from a totally different engine on which I've not even touched anything. Got a better video today, showing throttle response...audio is better if nothing else. The first run is me cracking the throttle immediately wide open after the engine had been idling for a good 30 seconds or so. The engine here is always going to initially respond a little slowly just because it's got a really heavy flywheel attached and has to spin up the whole gearbox input shaft when the centrifugal clutch engages. Anyone who knows these cars knows that this would normally have resulted in a fairly noticeable pause before the engine really picked up. She starts a lot better now too. Usually you had to give her a bit of throttle to initially get the engine to catch. I have cobbled together a connection to the throttle cable which seems to work okay...think we might need to try to get a road test done tomorrow. I'm really, really curious to see how she behaves under load now. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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I wonder if your previous stumble would have been an overly rich mixture - 7% would suggest so. Popping back on the over-run usually suggests a lean mixture rather than a rich one.
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Living vicariously through other people's projects!
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Following the experiment yesterday I had cobbled together a link to the throttle control...which went *ping* the first time I tried applying full throttle. Version 2.0 was quickly put together.  This actually worked surprisingly well. Unfortunately actually on the road this carb didn't work as well as it looked like it might. On wide open throttle it feels like the engine is really bogging down at lower revs. However it has very much highlighted how well the original one isn't behaving in some circumstances. The throttle response here is far more linear, the original one felt that there was far more of an off/medium/high sort of throttle. This one is also far happier to sit on a very light throttle at a set speed - 30mph for example can be maintained without needing to continually adjust. Being able to just bring the revs up till the clutch starts to bite and then being able to just roll it on as you move off makes things so much smoother and pleasant. At higher revs it felt more lively so long as you didn't go beyond about 70% throttle. I think I might be seeing a reason that it feels like this engine is holding back a bit at the top end. Here's what I saw when I got back from the test.  Not maybe obvious in the photo but the whole outer of the carb was swimming in fuel. Doing some testing with the air cleaner off showed an interesting effect - when the throttle is opened anywhere beyond about 50% there is a tendency for a fine mist of fuel to want to hover about 2" above the carb throat - I'm guessing suspended there by pressure waves caused by resonance within the inlet manifold. I'm sure I recall hearing of folks using dual carbs on air cooled VWs (so each carb feeding two cylinders exactly like this) having trouble with exactly this phenomenon with certain carb setups. Pretty sure I've heard this referred to as "fuel lift" on a couple of occasions. That's where the fuel that I've been seeing running off the carb has been coming from though, it's nothing to do with a leak. It's literally been getting sprayed over the inside of the air cleaner housing, then running down over the carb. The air cleaner is just a metal-on-metal join so isn't hermetically sealed or anything like that. I'm getting the feeling that's putting a theoretical limit on how much charge we can get into the engine, and why it has always felt like the last 30% or so of the throttle travel really doesn't seem to do anything. I think it's a combination between this effect and the carb being better to run slightly lean (according to the manual) which might together account for the sneezing habit. What to actually *do* about it though I've no idea. Applying some brainpower and maybe ask thoughts from folks who do more engine tuning etc for a living may be the answer. Will let you know if I get anywhere. In the meantime though I will put the original carb back...after further cleaning. I'd obviously failed to shift the offending gunk last time around so it was dismantled again and chucked back in the ultrasonic cleaner. My cleaner wasn't quite big enough to fully submerge the whole carb though which was always rather limiting. However as we saw above PhilA presented an idea which was a stroke of genius and effectively made my ultrasonic cleaner more than big enough.  Plenty big enough to thoroughly submerge it now.  It was left in there with the cleaner running for a full two hours. It *definitely* shifted a lot more crud this time round...both based on the sludge left behind when it was removed from the cleaner and just how it looks.   I'll get it out back on the car tomorrow and see where we are. Setup procedure will be done by the book too. So while this carb experiment might not have been an immediate fix, the behaviour when bumbling around at 30mph or below, starting etc has very much highlighted that the existing carb wasn't allowing the engine to perform as well as it could. Whether that's down to this carb being in need of a professional service or just limitations of the combination of this carb and this engine is something I've yet to confirm. One thing I will be doing is rechecking the valve clearances. I did check these when I first got KPL, but that was a long time ago. 0.15mm is the correct cold clearance for both inlet and exhaust valves. It will be a lot more of a faff now the engine is in TPA because she has intact wheel wells... Will order in a new set of rocker cover gaskets first though. I was incredibly lucky to get them to seal properly when I reused them the first time round, expecting them to survive being taken off and refitted twice is a bit of an ask... |
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Last Edit: Aug 2, 2020 23:26:16 GMT by Zelandeth
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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First order of business for yesterday (well, was actually a bunch of boring real life stuff...wasn't until gone 1700 before I was able to stick my head outside) was to get the original carb refitted. On the plus side, I've done this enough times now that it takes about ten minutes.  While fitting this I made a point of trying to get some of the slack out of the throttle cable as there was a lot of dead travel in it before which made applying anything more than about 40% throttle really awkward. I was then slightly delayed at this point by the battery being flat. I have been doing a lot of stop/start work lately and it was never charged while the car was off the road as I can recall so not massively surprising. Conveniently due to the low power draw of the Invacar's electrical systems, the 12A of charge current from the charger is more than enough to meaningfully help as a jump start (as I recall I measured the current draw of the Dynastart while cranking to be in the region of 30A). While there was initially a lot of spluttering, coughing and one properly shotgun loud backfire while the residual carb cleaner was expelled and a bit of faffing around wishing I had three hands while I got the idle mixture dialled in, we were soon back up and running. It seems that whatever blockage was in there last time we were successful in dislodging this time. So, on to the test run. I set the camera running before I started out on the test run. Unfortunately because I'm an idiot I totally forgot to close the offside window so there's a heap of wind noise. Sorry. Equally the camera aim is horrible - again a limit of the holder and that location. I've got a couple of alternatives on the way from Amazon as we speak to try in the future as I'd really like to be able to get *decent* driving footage. This gives a better idea of how she's actually running now though at least. I do note that I appear to need to poke the tail light earthing arrangements again as the indicators stop flashing when the brake lights are on. Think it's time I just rebuilt those lights with better lamp holders and proper wiring as they're nothing but trouble. (No, I haven't wired the gauge pod up yet either.) She will still stumble occasionally if you crack the throttle open instantly from idle, but I haven't been able to provoke any sneezing today. If you make a point of smoothly rolling on the throttle rather than just cracking it open, cleaning the carb and having tweaked the idle speed up a bit seems to mostly have resolved that. I do wonder if a throttle damper might be something worth thinking about here. The low speed/low throttle behaviour has been vastly improved. It's possible to sit at 30mph now without the car complaining which is a nice improvement. It was always a bit hit and miss, but you generally could provoke a sneeze from the carb by hitting the throttle hard after coasting for a bit. I've deliberately tried several times today but wasn't able to replicate it - so am tentatively labelling that as fixed by cleaning the carb more thoroughly. What it hasn't done anything whatsoever about is the fuel lift problem. The carb still ends up wet with fuel after any period of hard acceleration, and there's still little noticeable difference between 70% and 100% throttle. I'm really not sure what to do about this...If the air cleaner was a better seal against the carb body it would be less of an issue, but as there's a sufficient gap there that any fuel mist that lands on the inner surfaces of the air cleaner housing eventually run down the inside of it and then down the outside of the carb intake, then down over the body. I wonder if it might be possible to fit an O ring to seal the base join between the air cleaner and the carb? Obviously would need to plug the two cutouts (which allow it to close to clamp onto the carb) with something flexible too. I'm not sure this is something that I can hope to resolve with the carb itself as it (at least if my understanding is correct) is more a function of resonance effects within the inlet manifold itself causing pulses to force fuel back up through the carb when the inlet valves are both closed. Alteration of the air filter side of things to mitigate the effects of the phenomenon seems to be the order of the day. Figuring out a way to properly seal the air filter to the carb *seems* to be the easiest avenue. It's not a massive problem, the fuel doesn't exactly wind up pouring everywhere, the carb body itself just tends to appear slightly damp to the touch after a run and it evaporates entirely within a minute or two of the engine stopping. I'd obviously prefer *not* to have flammable liquid, no matter in how small quantities, winding up in my engine bay anywhere other than inside my engine though. Long term it's definitely something I want to get rid of - especially given that the road layout around where I live means that full throttle blasts are a necessity pretty much any time I go out whether I like it or not. On the plus side though it seems that she is running pretty well again. Only gremlin that really came to light was that I do need to put a tiny amount of slack back into the throttle cable. It sometimes hangs up with the throttle held open by about 0.00002%, holding the idle speed up just high enough that I can't engage drive. Simple enough to fix though. Oh, and I need to stick the battery on to charge...Would have done that tonight, but as the Citroen is heading into the garage this morning it needed to spend some time on the charger as it is in need of a new battery and struggles to hold charge for more than a few days.  Once she's got a fresh MOT on I'll get that battery replaced - it's still under warranty so will be getting swapped out as soon as the car is actually mobile again. The car is at the garage having the stuffed suspension bush replaced and a fresh MOT done as we speak. I'll get the Invacar hooked up on the charger later this afternoon. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,360
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Maybe look at revising the whole air cleaner mounting situation? A bit of silicone hose and two clips rather than the current slotted tube affair?
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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Maybe look at revising the whole air cleaner mounting situation? A bit of silicone hose and two clips rather than the current slotted tube affair? Not a bad thought. I'm a little reluctant to mess with it too much though simply because it's such a distinctive component in the engine bay. One thing which I think may be worth a shot would be seeing if we could put a spacer under the carb to increase the length of the inlet tract a bit. Though we don't have a huge amount of surplus height to work with. I could probably make the whole elbow arrangement behind the filter cylinder in silicone if necessary though without too much hassle. I wouldn't complain about shifting that PCV line round the back as it gets in the way every time I want to remove the engine cowl.  I don't think we'll likely need much - likely as not we've just got some weird unwanted resonance effect going on here and hopefully slightly tweaking things will put an end to it. I'll be double-checking my valve clearances shortly too just to make sure we don't have a valve that's not fully opening because a locknut has slipped there or anything. -- -- -- Had her out and about again today, probably the best part of an hour's driving under various conditions...and no issues to report.   The carb continues to seem a lot happier after the second strip down and clean. That and having removed about 1/2 a turn at the twist grip of slack out of the throttle cable has vastly improved the drivability of the car. I've been deliberately being a bit heavier on the brakes while out today and they do seem to be improving as a result. They do definitely have the grunt to pull the car up rapidly if you press hard enough (I've had to do one emergency stop from 50-ish when someone decided to reverse out of a driveway on the A422 without warning in front of me, and pretty much had to peel my face off the windscreen), they just feel a bit "dead" under normal use in a way that just doesn't inspire confidence. Hoping that a bit of use will improve matters. If not a new set of shoes (rather than ones stored in who knows what conditions for a few decades) aren't expensive. I've officially given up trying to free off the engine cover lock. A couple of external straps (like used on the Jeep Wrangler) will be fitted for now to stop it rattling until I can find the patience to try to come up with a solution to the existing lock (and all its fasteners) being a solid block of rust. No it won't look stock, but I'm more interested in getting miles covered than satisfying the concourse committee at this stage! It still surprises me how happy she is at 50 or so compared to a lot of small cars from the 70s or even 80s. Noisy yes, but there's no vibration or buffeting or things like the windscreen wiper trying to make a bid for freedom. The offside windows rattle like there's no tomorrow but that's because half the channel at the base is still missing! Once she's got some proper miles under her belt and I'm convinced we've got most of the bugs from 20 odd years sitting in a field worked out I can honestly see us covering some decent distances in this little car quite happily. |
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Last Edit: Aug 5, 2020 22:47:13 GMT by Zelandeth
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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These turned up this morning.  Which has finally allowed me to dispense with the bungee cord wrapped around the fan shroud which was utterly failing to prevent the engine cover from bouncing around. The original latch is essentially a solid block of rust (as are the fasteners - two of which are really difficult to get at) and is utterly beyond redemption.  Not exactly pretty,..but that's not really high on my priority list. It's an effective solution though and has *massively* reduced the racket in the car caused by the cover rattling, buzzing and crashing around, especially on less smooth surfaces. Doesn't look massively out of place either I reckon. I'm fairly sure they are actually fitted back to front, but this is just the way things lined up best with the level difference between the engine cover and surrounding bodywork. We did a little experiment this afternoon when I was on the way back home. Previously I'd only really had one proper journey out of town - to and from the Festival of the Unexceptional last year - in this car to give me a better idea of real world performance and cruising ability. It's really hard to gauge in Milton Keynes as you run into a roundabout every 0.9 miles! So on the way home I hopped onto the A5 down by Bletchley and stayed on till the Stacy Bushes Milton Keynes exit. This test was a roaring success I feel. She's entirely happy to cruise at 60-65mph without any drama whatsoever, and has more in the tank for overtaking. I think the drivers of the few cars I passed today we're rather baffled by the tiny, scruffy pale blue tripod that had just merrily sailed past them without a care in the world, making a noise like a cross between a 60s motorbike and a hovercraft. During my previous trip out of town I'm pretty confident now I was still suffering carb related issues as the performance today was very noticeably more eager. Previously she would sit at 55-60, but it felt like you were running out of steam a bit by then, whereas today she was happy to cruise above 60 with a reserve of power still on tap. Does take a little while to wind up to it, and I imagine hills would still knock her back...but we were only talking about a rated output of 19.3bhp from new so your expectations need to be realistic. Importantly though she gets up to speed quick enough to never feel like a liability, and she definitely gets up to cruising speed quicker than the van by quite a comfortable margin. I'd not maybe want to go mixing with rush hour traffic on the M1, but it's entirely possible to drive this car in real world traffic in 2020 so long as you use a bit of common sense. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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jamesd1972
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,921 
Club RR Member Number: 40
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I find with the LR that if you can get up to 40 reasonably briskly then these days that’s fine. I think the % of max speed 40 people has gone up with people trying to save the planet or something. It’s not uncommon for me to be actually held up by people in modern cars on 60 limit roads.
With short gearing and what 50bhp / tonne (?) and the ability to actually use full throttle I’d be surprised if you held people up much at all.
Put my mind at rest and tell me you have a fire extinguisher nailed on somewhere just in case ?
Keep the updates coming.
James
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Rich
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 6,339
Club RR Member Number: 160
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That’s probably fix that fuel lift problem too, forcing it through the carb..  |
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Whilst I find it interesting to read about the various bits of tinkering, which you have undertaken with this contraption; I must admit that drawing on my experience of attending RTA's where one has been involved, generally at nowhere near the speeds to which you appear to crave. They do tend to fly apart very easily, offering limited crash protection; crumple zones were not even in the dictionary of the vehicle designer..
Just be careful as to how you drive the vehicle; in particular speeds not much above walking pace are a more sensible alternative.
You may well think of me as a kill-joy, but life's experience and the desire to live to a ripe old age, dictates my view.
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,360
Club RR Member Number: 64
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No different to riding a motorcycle...
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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To be honest I'm usually happy bumbling along at 40-50 pretty much irrespective of what I'm driving these days. However sometimes the road conditions simply dictate that you need to get a move on. Especially around where I live just now where patience isn't something a lot of road users have ever heard of. By driving slowly you're far more of a hazard than keeping up with everyone else.
Yes fibreglass will disintegrate in a crash, but it's astonishingly good at absorbing energy while doing so. I know a couple who were in quite a nasty accident in a Reliant Rialto a few years back, most of the car was collected with a broom but they both walked away with a few superficial cuts and bruises.
At least the Model 70 (unlike the preceding versions despite the similar appearance) does have a sturdy chassis and proper seat belt attachments to give you at least half a chance.
I very much do keep how vulnerable I am in it in mind though and drive accordingly. Plan ahead, always leave yourself an exit and keeping your eyes moving are the main things. The best crash protection is avoiding one. I really do feel that the PCV driver training I did a few years back helped in that regard. Vast majority of the things they tought were just common sense, but actually making you think about it consciously can only be a good thing.
I was still reduced to a gibbering puddle of brainless goo by the end of the hour long commentated drive though...
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Last Edit: Aug 7, 2020 14:34:40 GMT by Zelandeth
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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