Right, Stef removed and stripped the carbs, confirmed it was the spring on the accelerator pump diaphragm, put everything back together and ran it up on the rollers. Contrary to my assumption that the jets were oversized, the jets actually wanted to go up a size and it was then running sweet as a nut … an indicated 110 bhp and 12.5 AFR around 5,500 RPM. Which all sounds perfectly pleasant, even if I don’t know if that’s good or bad   Unfortunately, there’s no graph to go with it, as this is currently the only output from the dyno …

However, there’s an offer of cash money for me to sprinkle a little magic and put together a little box of tricks to capture the readings and generate some graphs. It’s an intriguing potential project, but I’m guessing it’s likely one that will burn up the hours and blow any budget we agree beforehand. Watch this space, I guess… 

Unfortunately, all is not now tickety-boo with the car. The rocker cover is puking oil like it’s going out of fashion and the coolant temp started creeping off the scale on the motorway home.  The fan (that’s set to 85) stayed on and it didn’t seem to want to cool down. Thankfully, I reached my turn off just as the gauge reached scary and the couple of miles at a lower pace seemed to let it recover slightly. The gauge has been erratic over the last few weeks, which would ordinarily lead me to suspect the voltage regulator, however on this occasion the fuel reading was showing normal – so I think it actually was hot. 

Ordered a rubber gasket for the rocker cover from Burtons, to see if it’ll give me a better fit than the cork ones I’ve had of late. I’ve also ordered some special washers from Retro Bolts, to properly spread the load and hopefully stop me bending the metal again. Before I fit them both, I’ll have to find some time to “adjust” the cover lip with the aid of a range of adjustment devices and a straight edge. That’d be a good time to also drop the oil and put some fresh in, I guess.

For the coolant, I ordered a new black-ringed sender … as it turns out that Ford thought it was a good idea to use different senders on different car/engine combinations. The different senders are matched to differently calibrated gauges on the dash and avid readers with a long memory will recall that I swapped my dash for a 6-clock set from a V6. Given that it’s easier to get to the sender than it is to the back of the gauges, I’ll try swapping the sender first and if that doesn’t sort it I can scavenge the gauge from the spare set. If it gets that far, then I’ll have access to the voltage regulator on the back of the clocks anyway, so can swap it out if needs be.

At least I got to spend a few hours tidying the garage. I can even use my workbench now I’ve cleared 7 years of accumulated crap off it