Fuel Hose & tuning

[Hasbeen]

Mitchel's thread on flooding stung me into action today.

A while back, when my fuel consumption sky rocketed from a bit over 8 to around 17L/100Km, I assumed my floats valves were probably leaking a bit. The thing's idle was not as smooth as usual, & the float valves were about 7 years old. I found a damp spot at the tank outlet, & tightened that, but knew that was not the problem.

Although I could see nothing wrong with the old, I fitted new float valves. These were the ones with a red rubber tip, & a longish spring loaded plunger on the float end of the needle, with the shorter seat body. They replaced needles with a shorter spring loaded plunger, & a black rubber tip. This had little effect on my fuel consumption

Having had trouble with poor quality fuel hose, when talking to my mower [mostly 12 to 20 horse power ride on things around here], shop bloke, he told me he will not use ordinary rubber fuel hose, & only uses semi rigid plastic hose on gravity feed units, & injection quality hose, where a pump is doing the job. I brought home 4.5Ft of what I hope is the good stuff. Meanwhile I had got another set of the original float valves.

Today I got my ass into gear. The fuel levels were not correct, so I fitted the new valves, ran the engine, & checked the levels, which are now good.

I started fitting the new hoses, & found 2 of the quite newish hoses were delaminating, between the inner & outer layers of rubber, up the reinforcing fabric. These areas were wet with fuel, but nothing like dripping.

After fitting the new hoses, I ran the engine, & had one bad leak, & 2 minor leaks in just 6 joints. I was amazed at how hard I had to screw the hose clips to get these joints fuel tight. Obviously the rubber in this hose is much harder. If it works as hard, & doesn't pack up in a year or so, I will be happy.

After balancing the carbs, & tuning them, the thing is running like a Swiss watch. Now all I have to do is find out if all this mucking about has fixed the excessive fuel consumption.

Hasbeen

[Hasbeen]

I'll have to do a bit more tuning on the thing still. Used her to go to town today, & found it not quite right.

To start with, it is quite cold here today, by our standards, down about 15C, [under 60F]. As a test I fired her up without any choke. She fired, & spluttered a bit for half a minute, then ran OK. She backed out of the shed happily, at low revs with in 45 seconds of starting.

I think I must have let her cool to much while fitting float valves, & tuned with her too cool, thus getting her a bit rich.

By the time I got to town, 25Km with everything nicely warm, she was idling at 1100 RPM, another indication of being a bit rich.

I spent the last couple of days running prunings through the mulching machine, & spreading this on the gardens. Once my back will come straight after that, I'll have another go at tuning the carbs.

Still she is running beautifully, & going like a rocket, or as much like one that a stockish TR7 can go. She must be sounding nice too. More people turned & looked as I quietly drove around, than ever do when I'm in the S2000, only the 8 draws as much attention.

Hasbeen