Odd Sized Balls

The "Sheep In Wolf's Clothing" Mustang finally passed its test in June, and so, at the end of the month, it got a fresh tax disc. I didn't mind paying £230 for a year's road tax - less than £20 a month seems like a small price to pay for roads that are the envy of the rest of the world. And so, at the beginning of July, it hit the streets. I even gave it a damn good wash, wax and buff-up, mainly because in between the MoT and the tax, it was parked under a tree. A cherry tree. A cherry tree that was home to a lot of pigeons. And pigeon shite with cherry stones in it is surprisingly hard to shift - I wasn't sure which would be more appropriate to shift them, a pressure washer or a nine-iron.

During the cleaning process, the dog decided to have a kip on the driver's seat. A delightful shower of small leaves fluttered down with every light breeze, a fact that didn't stop the dog getting her 40 winks, and she ended up covered in the damn things. Bone idle creature.

It didn't seem to matter, as after two weeks of driving the car I was all but ready to get shut of it - I wasn't getting along with it at all. It was utterly, totally gutless, more than even a smog-motor 2.3 Pinto and C3 auto had any right to be. Getting up even the slightest gradient was touch-and-go, and pulling out of junctions into traffic was brown trousers time. And worst of all, I was getting around 16-18mpg.

I took it over to James so we could attack the blowing manifold-to-downpipe issue - the studs were so worn that the M12 nuts wouldn't tighten up. Having whipped the manifold off, James discovered that the reason the M12 nuts wouldn't tighten up was that the studs were actually 7/16" UNC. It was late at night, and James didn't have any 7/16", so he drilled and tapped a couple of M10s... how cool's that? We also removed the spark plugs - snapping two in the process - and found evidence of extremely weak mixture and/or extra advance. I stripped the carb down - a Holley copy of a Weber - and it looked perfect, it was like new inside. I put it back together and, lo and behold, not a jot of difference. I asked James if he had a Weber from a 2.0 Pinto; he replied "Hold on, I've got a bag of them round here somewhere." Indeed he had - he found a rat-proof bag with three Webers in it.

Later, I checked ignition timing again, and noticed that at TDC, the rotor arm wasn't pointing directly at number one terminal on the dizzy cap. Hmmm ... it seemed that the cam belt had jumped a notch. Putting that right made... huh, pretty much bugger-all difference. I put the best of James's three Webers on, and it seemed a bit healthier but the throttle linage was completely different, and while you can unbolt the levers from the spindle on the Euro-Weber, the US version had the levers peened onto the shaft.

Then, on my way home from work one day, I stopped via Wacky Racers and Wacky Mick lent me a Weber from a 3.0 Capri. This had a ball-joint throttle linkage just like the Holley/Weber, so a short while ago I dropped it on.

It went straight on, and all was groovy until I tried to attach the throttle cable. Damnation, the ball on the 3.0 Weber was much bigger than the one on the Holley. However, there was a bit of linkage left on Wacky's carb, so it was time for a bit of on-the-spot engineering...

Well shag me bandy and call me Rolf, it's like a different car... and in a good way. The carb instantly idled exactly as it should, and though there's no kickdown linkage and it's clearly way too much carb for the engine, there's actually a bit of life to the engine now, where previously you'd have found more life in a tramp's vest. It's still not going to spin the wheels but at least it's not dangerous, and on the first tank it returned 23mpg...!

Last weekend was a busy one, too. I headed down to the Mopar Euronats at Santa Pod on Friday evening, went to the Silverstone Classic on Saturday, then back to Santa Pod on Saturday night and all day Sunday. It was SPF50, hood-down weather almost all weekend, although the overall NSCC count at the event was low and James and I ended up camped next to a gentleman who suffered a beer-induced psychotic event late on Friday night culminating in the attempted murder of the imaginary intruder in his tent...

While Russ and Shaun Pursley managed a string of low-nine-second NPBs at the event, poor Jamie Hughes managed to blow up the Land Rover again. Honestly, if bad luck was beer, Jamie would be pissed until Christmas.

There's a whole month to go until the next race meeting at York, so there's plenty of time to try to get the Pinto Fox up to scratch...

Eugene