Having come to the conclusion that the Invacar will need the carb pulling for a proper deep clean again I got to having a dig around to see if there's a carb rebuild kit available for this one as it would make sense to me to swap out all the seals and gaskets for fresh ones while I've got it in bits. While this carb isn't showing any appreciable wear anywhere it's still over forty years old so I wouldn't mind at all if I were to spend a bit of extra time doing a full service. Unfortunately the Weber 32ICS10 on here seems to have very little in the way of parts availability out there.
The other carb they apparently came with was a Solex 40PID. That at least does have *some* availability...though it sounds like the larger 40mm carb is probably better suited to the larger 650cc version of this engine. After a bit of poking around I did note that that does also come in the same 32mm size as the Weber...and *that* does have decent availability as it's used on early Land Rovers and several PSA models. Hmm...if one of those were to pop up somewhere cheaply enough I might have to do a bit of experimenting.
Someone on another forum did link me to something which very much piqued my interest too in this field.
Link to a throttle body fuel injection kit for small engines
Now a lot of folks would run screaming away from this sort of idea. There's a few reasons I won't however. Firstly is that I conducted exactly that sort of conversion on my Lada a couple of years ago. There were a few hiccups due to dodgy secondhand parts and a few components being hard to obtain because the donor vehicle hasn't been made for twenty plus years. However once they were ironed out (finding the bug in the ECU design which meant standard lambda sensors didn't work was fun...) the difference to the carb setup was like night and day. The overall driveability of the car was transformed, and you could just jump in, turn the key and go, irrespective of the ambient temperature, it the car is hot, cold or anywhere in between. I reckon we gained a huge lump of mid range torque too. In spite of what the naysayers said, even though several bits were still unfinished and lashed together a year later the system had proven to be utterly reliable once the initial bugs were ironed out.
While it cost me a small fortune and trying to track down some parts was a pain (the donor vehicle having both a stuffed ECU and siezed fuel pump was unhelpful!) it was a rewarding challenge to undertake and resulted in a car I was far more happy to use.
For now we're just going to stick with the existing carb and clean it up, or possibly swap it out for something similar but with better support. For one thing I'd really like to experiment with the jetting a bit. My gut tells me the standard carb runs things a little on the lean side of ideal.
On the plus side, having had the carb off before it was a lot quicker and less annoying job to get to it this time as I knew what contortions and stripping down of the engine bay were needed to get the retaining nuts out so we were left with this.
Still can't get over the size of that oil cooler for a 500cc engine.
...With this rather grubby lump of metal ready for some attention.
When it was previously cleaned I never really put much effort into the outside of the casing, I'll give that a better scrub this time round.
Pretty much the moment I started stripping it down it became abundantly apparent that it really did need to be stripped down. This is the state the fuel inlet strainer was in.
With this all dropping out of the recess the above strainer sits in.
While the float bowl looked clean at a glance, there was actually quite a lot of this grit in there too.
Into the cleaner it goes.
Will obviously need to be rotated several times before it's finished but despite being a couple of sizes smaller than ideal the cleaner does a good job.
The fact that the cleaning solution had after only a few minutes visibly turned darker and cloudy shows it's doing something.
Will get the other sides done tomorrow, blow all the drilled passages out and finally refit it to the car before taking a test drive.
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Yesterday I swore at the Jag a lot. Changing four belts should not take an entire afternoon.
Whoever was responsible for the belt tensioner design on this car was a complete and utter sadist. They're awkward to get at (except for the one for the air con belt which you can clearly see above), which you kind of expect and accept going into the job. The location of them means that you can get about 1/18th of a turn on the nuts at a time, having to rotate the spanner by 180 degrees between each movement. This is annoying...but especially so given that the threaded rod used in the adjusters is of a ridiculously fine pitch for the application. This meant that it took me more than half an hour of knuckle grazing, smooshing my face up against the front splitter and swearing to back the alternator belt tensioner off enough to actually get the belt off. This one is even more annoying as you have to do it completely blind unless you're lucky enough to have a vehicle lift on hand. Just having it parked on static ramps is no good as you need access from both above and below...
There's absolutely nothing difficult about this job...it's just incredibly soul destroyingly tedious.
I honestly hope that I never have to do this again...it was a truly horrible job.
Unfortunately once everything was back together I think I have found why the original compressor clutch assembly failed.
The far side of the pulley you can see here is adjusted to the correct clearance. Yep...the input shaft on the compressor is bent. So I'm on the hunt for a new compressor after all...though it does look like we've tracked one down already. Just annoying to have wasted the best part of £100 on the clutch assembly.
Not one to be put off by such things though I turned my attention elsewhere. One thing which had always been letting the interior down was the steering wheel. It had faded in a slightly odd, blotchy way and looked a mess.
Finally got around to treating it with some leather dye today...I think this looks a thousand times better now.
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I have made a start on de-rusting and painting the front apron on the van as it was getting to look embarrassingly rusty... obviously waiting on a top coat now but we're getting there.
The bonnet skin has had it, I'll get a repair made to that corner shortly, though longer term the panel needs to be changed. Don't worry about the slight overspray on the bumper by the way, it needs painting too but will be removed to do that.
Made a bit of a step forward with my planned audio upgrades when I stumbled across these in a box in the loft.
I bought these back in 2007 as part of a kit including all the fittings, wiring etc and both the sub and amplifier which are still in use, hooked up to my stereo downstairs. I'd completely forgotten I still had these though, I thought they were still in the Saab which I passed on to a friend years ago. While they're not exactly a prestige name as far as I'm aware they definitely exceeded my expectations performance wise. These should do nicely in the van I reckon. They're a lot less conspicuous than they were when new as after a couple of years in use the almost neon green colour of the cones faded to what you see now.
I'm usually one to try avoiding cutting holes in things, but I like my music and there's not really much option if I want some better speakers in place. The position I'm planning to install these will be about as discreet as I can possibly make it though.
