[Both in the awful pun sense and the accurate description of the car sense]
Yesterday I spent the day with John (and for the first half of the day) Nikki, attempting to hand-build an exhaust to fit my beloved Rebecca’s LCB Manifold.
See, I could just about justify the money for the front part of the system, the LCB frontpipe; but the cost of the whole system was more than I felt I could justify; especially with that Janspeed silencer and a stainless steel back section kicking around in the garage.
So, we set about creating an exhaust on Friday, using the LCB front pipe and a sleeve to get that to join to the Janspeed silencer. It looked like, with a bit of a gimp on the angle the silencer went in, we should be able to join it to the backsection.
It went a bit pearshaped though
Having managed to get frontpipe attached to the manifold (Nikki’s suggestion here making that possible) and the manifold onto the car, they attached the silencer using the sleeve we made yesterday while I set to on attaching the various cables to the carb (inclduding making up a throttle assembly).
Once together we tried it.
No go. Turny turny turny tuuuurrrnnneeeyyy tuuuuuurrrrnnnnneeey.
Okay, check everything over, all looks correct. Eat lunch. New battery.
Turny turny. Okay, Is petrol reaching the engine? No.
Okay, is petrol reaching the carb? Yes.
Remove carb, disassemble, discover it’s full of dried-petrol-crud (if you don’t know, petrol forms a almost impervious varnish like layer when it dries out). So, we swapped for the other carb. Ah. Cable too short. Attach cable *anyway*…
Car starts.
Ra!
Discover back section won’t now join to silencer, because silencer outlet is a good foot to the right of where we need it to be. Go to shop. Go to Exhaust place. Go to another exhaust place.
Success! They have an S shaped piece of pipe in their skip… and some pipe clamps, which they kindly supplied, there was, it turned out, exactly the right amount of exhaust paste left.
The exhaust then went on… with some coaxing. And worked.
We then swapped the original throttle cable (which given it’s condition was quite possibly the original throttle cable) for one I’d taken off the MZ (it was a bit sticky for the ‘zed, but the mog’s got a stronger return spring, so it’s okay.
And the car? The car now runs like it’s not completely starved of petrol. The idle’s a bit uneven, but overall, much better. Throttle’s a bit lighter than I’m used to… The mog’s old throttle return spring was a bit industrial (although not compared to my Yugo which had a fiesta bonnet spring as it’s return spring!) and the new carb’s spring is way-light. But that’s okay :-)
She’s also a bit quicker, axle tramp’s a bit more of a noticable problem, so I’ll have to take it gently, especially with those unhardened half shafts…
