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My re-ordered valve shims, along with a few other bits, were in the
mail, friday afternoon.

As I had a lot to do today, I only got to fitting them, & replacing
the cam, at 3.00 PM. All went together, with the new cam sprocket
bolt lock tab, I'd managed to aquire, & the clearances checked out
OK. I have carefully dated the sheet, with the shims fitted, so
there should be no mistake, next time.

I was not too impressed with the new cam cover cork gasket. Its a
poor miserable thing, about half as wide as the old one, & not a
good fit, as usual.
As I'm going on a run tomorrow, with the near by restored auto club,
I did not have time to let the glue sticking it in place in the
cover, set completely, which is a bit of a worry.

As the idle has been a bit slow, & lumpy recently, I took her for a
10 Km run, to warm her up, & gave her a bit if a tune. The throttles
were pretty much in sink, but required 3/8 of a turn on the throttle
stops, to bring the revs up to 800.

The Iridium plugs have done over 13,000 Km, so I gave them a light
wipe, with a diamond file, then checked the mixture. The moment I
lifted either of the SUs pistons, even very slightly, the revs
dropped dramatically, & almost stalled the car.

I was surprissed that it took 4 flats richer, on both main jets, to
get the thing near tuned. I think it will need to go a little bit
richer, to be sopt on, but as it was getting dark, I called it
quits, & went for a test drive.

When I stopped at the end of our road, the engine was so smooth &
quiet, that I was surprised to find it was still idling at 800 RPM.
I had grabbed my screw driver to go & adjust the stops, before I
looked & saw the revs. I'll go on the run tomorrow, & then check it
again.

After I put the car away, I found a bit of oil, on the grass, where
I was doing my tuning, so I may have a problem with the cam cover
gasket, but its too dark to bother looking now. I can't be bothered
getting a lead light out, so I Tightened the cover screws a little
more, put a couple of litres of oil in the boot.

Hasbeen

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Century Gothic, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Hasbeen</i>

... the engine was so smooth & quiet, that I was surprised to find it was still idling at 800 RPM ...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
The joys of fine tuning an engine ... [;)]

<center>
<font color="blue"><i>1981 TR7 FHC Sprint (better known as 't Kreng)
1981 TR7 DHC (not very well known yet, but back on the road)
Also a 1980 TR7 DHC, 1980 TR7 DHC FI, 1981 TR7 FHC
http://tr7beans.blogspot.com/</i></font id="blue"></center>

I would suspect the oil is coming from somewhere else. The adhesive should only be required to hold the gasket in place for installation. Once the cover is torqued down the cork will do the sealing.
I did some tuning on my 7 last weekend with good results. It sure is satisfying when you see a marked improvement after a small job.
This weekend I have to try to motivate myself to change the starter but it's rainy and cold so the motivation is hard to find-We'll see.

Enjoy the run!

Cheers,
Rich

1975 TR7 ACL764U

The bl^^dy starter is done!
The starter itself was pretty straightforward but the ghosts of owners past made the job a challenge.
The headers I have on the car had to be removed to get the starter out. No problems there. The old starter came off OK as well. Indexing the new geared starter took a bit of trial and error and when it came time to bolt it up the lower bolt (that was used on the old starter) would not go in. The bolt had seen better days so I popped up to the hardware store and picked up a replacement. Still wouldn't go in-Darn! It turned out that a PO had likely lost the proper bolt and had used a larger diameter bolt. Of course my new bolt was a direct replacement for his too big bolt and wouldn't go in. Once I knew what the problem was it was easily fixed. The next challenge was fried wiring. The starter wiring was melted and quite a bit of copper was exposed, just waiting to short out again and start the car on fire. I have no idea how the car was able to start with that melted burned mess! I took this opportunity to replace the brown wire back to the alternator and do a general tidy of the ignition wiring in the engine compartment, finding several critical wires that had been just twisted together and taped. The headers went back on very easily along with a neat carbon collector-exhaust gasket that should last longer than the half-missing original one.
When I went to start the car-no ignition. The starter worked just fine, but no spark. sigh* After an hour or so of hunting around I found that one of the coil leads had notches in the insulation, probably caused by scotch-lock connecters that were now long gone, leaving the wire weakened. I replaced that wire. Still no spark!
Sure enough the other coil wire had the same problem, caused by the PO, Mr. Scotchlock. I cut the wire back to a solid section and put in a new piece. Still no spark!. I pulled on the wire I had just patched and found it had broken farther up the line at another scotchlock nick. Just what he was splicing in I have no idea!
After that was repaired the car started like a charm.
Thank goodness for that! It's now almost midnight and I am enjoying a well-earned rum and coke and a hotcross bun and listening to the "Across the Universe" soundtrack as I vent.
As bl**dy awful as the whole exercise was it sure feels good to beat the PO's and have the car running.

Cheers[:)]
Rich

BTW: My harness replacement project has now moved well up the list!

1975 TR7 ACL764U

Yes Beans, I've raced yachts, & ridden show jumpers, & both are
great, but one of the true beauties of the automotive engine, is that
they give you back, exactly what you put into them. The extra bit of
effort is realy repaid.

Well done Rich. I hate electrical problems, as its so hard to find
all the things with old wiring.

I did my restored club run, & the old girl did not leak a drop of
oil, in 230 Km, so I must have had the cam cover screws not tight
enough.

The run was a ball. We were led by a 1923 Ford, into some very steep
grazing country, all gravel roads, in the back blocks of the coastal
ranges. The roads mostly ran along the ridges, except where they
dropped 600 ft into a vally, & climbed 600 ft up to the next ridge.


I was having some traction problems on some of the realy steep bits,
when the old timers slowed to 5 to 10 Km/H, but you should have seen
the 1970 Ford Falcon GT HO [325 BHP Bathurst race car model]. He was
spinning wheels [both of them, as these things have a limited slip
diff as stsndard] for 50 yards at a time, trying to get back up to
speed. In a few spots there was a kilometer or so of bitunen, where
the hills were too steep to climb on gravel.

Most of the old timers were US models, & the later stuff was from
Oz. Only 2 of us were upholding the pride of British car industry,
& the other one gave us most of the fun. A 1948 Ford Prefect is
probably not the best thing to take mountaineering, on a hot day, in
Queensland, Australia. He probably would have been OK, but the real
oldtimers were going too slow for him, which made him overheat.

Once he overheated, he then had problems with pre-vaporisation.
Still, he only had to be towed once, by a 39 Oldsmobile, which not
only had traction, to take off on the steep hill, but did not seem
to notice he was there.

After lunch, I took off for home, by my self, as I wanted to give
the little girl a bit of a thrash, after her tune up. She just flew
totally repaying the bit of time I've put into her recently.

Hasbeen

That sounds like a great day out.
I like going to the mixed make events and seeing
a variety of old cars in action.

Cheers,
Rich

1975 TR7 ACL764U