Yes Terence, I believe you can!
We had an unannounced, but very welcome, visit today from Kapri, Mr Kev Rooney, from down Portsmouth way I think.
Hopefully he'll correct me if Im wrong, (told you I know nuffink about mechanicking), but I believe it was:
Timing nearly 14 degrees out.
We'd been working from a notch in the front of the crankshaft pulley, believing it to be the timing mark. Rovers actually have graduated timing marks on the back half of the pulley though. Sure enough, there they were, clear as day. The notch was purely coincidental damage.
Wrong timing mark pointer.
The strip of tinplate bolted to the crankcase & aimed at the pulley wasn't the proper Rover part. When Loony took his from his spare Rover & bolted it on, it pointed directly at the proper marks.
Incorrectly set fuel level.
We'd checked the primary float bowl fuel level, but hadn't checked the secondary. It was filling right to the top of the chamber with fuel, overcoming the butterfly & filling the inlet. We'd noticed several fuel leaks dripping onto the manifold but couldn't trace them -the fuel was running out along the butterfly spindle. Also explains the excessive fuel consumption in the short time we've run the motor.
Mixture screws wound right out.
They didn't seem to be doing anything, no matter where Terry & Toad put them, which was down to the over fuelling. Kev put them back to the normal position, 2 complete turns out.
Incorrectly set throttle cable.
My fault. I'd adjusted the slack out of the cable when I'd set up the throttle pedal, but it was too tight, meaning the throttle was always slightly open & adjusting the tick over screw made no difference, so the engine was over-revving which in turn made gear changing a bit clunky. Kev backed off the cable adjustment & set the tick over. It's a bit low at the moment, but the engine needs to be run long enough to warm up before it's properly adjusted.
No radiator expansion tank.
We just have an overflow pipe from the rad filler neck that empties onto the road. It needs to run into a sealed expansion tank, mounted higher than the rad on the bulkhead. Without it, when the water heats up & expands, it pressurises the system, appearing as excessive breather vapour & a drop in water level in the rad.
After a couple of hours, Kev had the motor running pretty well & responding crisply when the throttle's blipped. I'm very happy to leave it well alone now.
Many, many thanks to Mr K for that, but also to Terry & Toad, who both put in huge amounts of their own, unpaid, time to sort this out. You can't buy mates like that. You're stars, both of you. Thank you.
Kapri also took the time to go over the truck with us & check we've got everything we need for the SVA test. We've now got a list of things to do, but it's all looking a bit more positive. He tells us there are 7 pick-ups being built for the commercial SVA test at the moment, so at least we're not alone.
Onwards & upwards!
