Hi guys.
You will have gathered that I am not much of a mechanic or restorer, but I have done some restoration on Miss January!
She was fine around town and on tickover, but was very flat when accelerating hard. Still quick, but nowhere near right. (though you are never sure when working from memory... Miss January had been off the road for several years until last summer, and modern cars have got pretty powerful, so maybe she was just as quick as she ever was and it was our rose tinted memories that were at fault....).
Also using rather more petrol than we remembered (18-19 to the gallon).
The electrical side is all 30 years old, but seemed to be working OK and the wastegate moved etc. so my friend (and professional mechanic....) Rob was of the opinion that it was the mixture, and that meant the carburettor.
The seals were visibly perished, and we decided that if they were loosing in air at tickover / low throttle openings you could tune it OK on tickover, but the amount of leakage would not be linear as the throttles opened and the revs built up. Thus you could either tune it for tickover and small throttle openings OR high revs and wide open throttle but not both....
I should at this point remind you that Miss January is an Elford turbo and therefore has an SU carburettor off an MG Metro Turbo...
So I bought an SU repair kit from the site recommended by Ian.
http://www.sucarb.co.uk/CarbEssentials. ... ctId=10543 (http://www.sucarb.co.uk/CarbEssentials.aspx?ProductId=10543)
And "we" rebuilt the carb.
With Rob doing all the work it was good fun. It rather helped that he knows what he is doing.... Maybe I\'ll do it next time.:2Rolleyes
The result?
Transformation!
(and two teaspoonfuls of lacquer, silt and corrosion in the bowl...)
I swear she is quicker than I remember!
Plenty quick enough to show up the 20 year old tyres anyway (and to show up my xx years old driving skills.... no ABS either...). Blue smoke everywhere.
Must get some stickier tyres. (Can\'t do much about the driver).
So, a success story.
(No photo\'s as I am ashamed of the state of the engine compartment).
John
Result John. Very Good.
Best get them old tyres burnt off..... :Nono!
Excellent news John. Sounds to me that Rob was like a pig in muck and thoroughly enjoyed doing the rebuild. I wouldn\'t hold you breath for too long next time it wants doing (I think Rob would be upset if he didn\'t do it), I\'d just stand by with the tea/coffee & buscuits & a stop watch :Giggle :3gears-rh
Blimey John, you\'re not driving around on 20 year old tyres are you? Risky business!
They are good fun, the Elfords, aren\'t they. I like the way the modern cars try to show how fast their euroboxes are and my RX7 is an old \'sportscar\' that is ancient and slow....
then the turbo spools up, I get it on the boost and I\'m away... and mr repmobile can\'t even sniff my tyres.... I\'m gone!
It\'s like being a kid again.
just out of interest John, which way round did you put the throttle spindle seals?
The instructions in the rebuild kit say to reverse them for the turbo carb or else they will leak, ( which is what I did) but after talking to the other lads, I reckon that\'s wrong.
My car misses slightly at the top end under full power and I think it\'s leaning out. I thought it was maybe the old fuel pump struggling to keep up but I\'m now thinking that it might be sucking in air via the throttle spindle seals and weakening the mixture.
Did your seals go in the traditional way.. ie. seal lips facing outwards away from the carb... or reversed as SU suggest ie. seal lips facing towards the carb?
John popper over to pick up my spare s2 rad yesterday afternoon, and I got to have a quick poke around Miss January and got a ride too!
She does seem ready for some TLC, but none the less very very cool. :) Nice to chat cars for a bit and cruise around the pretty roads of Malvern.
It was my first time in a turbo rotary, and I have to say it was very surprising. The Elford set-up spooled so early and smoothly it just felt like larger engine n/a style power. Certainly went fairly well when wound up!
I do think you are due for some new tyres though John, especially after possibly flat spotting them while showing off how well the brakes work :rollin
Quote from: Steve-A;766825John popper over to pick up my spare s2 rad yesterday afternoon, and I got to have a quick poke around Miss January and got a ride too!
She does seem ready for some TLC, but none the less very very cool. :) Nice to chat cars for a bit and cruise around the pretty roads of Malvern.
It was my first time in a turbo rotary, and I have to say it was very surprising. The Elford set-up spooled so early and smoothly it just felt like larger engine n/a style power. Certainly went fairly well when wound up!
I do think you are due for some new tyres though John, especially after possibly flat spotting them while showing off how well the brakes work :rollin
Lovely piece of road Steve. Need to do it in the dark with a few less people about. And some safer tyres.
Trouble is, as discussed elsewhere, ther is not a lot of quality rubber in 205 60 13.
(Some decent track day tyres around - eg. Yokahama A048R\'s and Toyo R888\'s - but read the small print and they are not to be used in temeratures below 4 and even 8 degrees centigrade, so it sort of limits the driving season....)
Anybody know anything about Falken Zeix ZE-912\'s?
(fast spool up is a sign of small turbo and low boost - Ian65 can confirm, but I think the figures are an extra 30-40 horsepower and an extra 30% of torque. Just enough to make them a nice undramatic amount better without wearing anything out).
John
Just though I\'d mention that since the carburettor clean out / reconditioning Miss January\'s fuel consumption has gone up from 18mpg to 25mpg. (Social driving, so occasional buzzing noises but no heavy traffic or long journeys or motorways).
I think I will call that success.
John
Thought I would share some images with you...
I recently found this photo of Miss January as a young lady on the Elford stand at the 1982 motorshow:
(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/Miss%20January%201982/rx7atMotorshow82.jpg)
More recently she looked like this:
(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7/P1010116.jpg)
(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7/P1010117.jpg)
(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7/P1010141.jpg)
And now she looks like this, with some refurbed Elford alloys off Ebay:
(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7%20August%202011/P1010105.jpg)
Gidday gents,
A friend of mine used to work for SU so have been hitting him up for some information about rebuilding my carb. As for the throttle spindle seals they should be the standard way round for the elford suck through setup. If you were running a blow though setup and the carb was under pressure then there might be a case to reverse them.
Mine is running very rich at idle so I am thinking the needle is worn. What needle and spring did you use?
the seals go in the usual way around...... the SU instructions are useless and wrong for Elford setups.... they refer to the metro turbo, not the rx7
She looks stunning.:)
So what jet and spring combo did you go for?
CRK269 rebuild kit & xw61t needle
there used to a brown coloured rx7 like yours but with different wheels round the corner from my work, i wonder if somebody on here owns it, there cant be many of them left in the uk now
Quote from: wolfie1;790508there used to a brown coloured rx7 like yours but with different wheels round the corner from my work, i wonder if somebody on here owns it, there cant be many of them left in the uk now
Need a Reg Wolfie. now that the nights are getting dark that\'s perfect cover for you creeping round to look at it for us if it\'s still around.....:Giggle
next time i see it i will get a reg but i havent seen it for 2-3 months now, i know its an x reg (at the end)
Ta for that.
You might have noticed that on another thread I was looking for a differential, as Miss January was making funny noises underneath....
(old ladies do that sometimes...)
So I picked up some bits (Axle, diff, propshaft, gearbox) from Andy, the breaker in Banbury, over the weekend.
Having now got the damn thing up on a ramp, the problem is a collapsed front propshaft universal joint.
I had tried wiggling the propshaft while lying underneath, and there was no play. On the ramp you can see that the two halves of the UJ are no longer in line - so a vibration and occasional graunching noises as it slips, but no "play". So much for my diagnostic ability.
So, forget the diff and gearbox (why didn\'t I get it on a ramp before I bothered.... ), but it occurred to me it might be better to get some new UJ\'s (if I could...) rather than use the 30 year old ones on the Banbury propshaft...
So off to my jolly old Unipart Automotive branch.
Two UJ\'s being delivered tomorrow for £16.07 each (probably plus VAT...).
Remains to be seen if they have got the part numbers right of course (want to take bets?).
John
Remains to be seen if they have got the part numbers right of course
LOL ............... are you sure you told them the right car ............
Good luck
Dibs
Glad to hear you\'ve got to the bottom of the problem John. UJs should be a nice easy fix. :)
Quote from: A7RXY;790819Remains to be seen if they have got the part numbers right of course
LOL ............... are you sure you told them the right car ............
Good luck
Dibs
If not, it will still be their fault. As experts in the field they should have guided me into giving them the correct requirement details.
So there. :evillaugh
(Never guess I was a management consultant, would you?)
John
Hi Guys.
These are the UJ\'s I got from Unipart / Blueprint:
(//%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7%20August%202011/P1010125.jpg)[/img]
Note the spring clip grooves are INSIDE the mounting "ears" on the propshaft.
(//%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7%20August%202011/P1010126.jpg)[/img]
Also note that you can just about see a new grease nipple in the packet with the spring clips... (OEM parts do not have this feature...)
(//%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g421/JohnAnkrett/RX7%20August%202011/P1010127.jpg)[/img]
It turned out to be a good thing that I had got a secondhand propshaft from Banbury - on mine, when the bearings collapsed (they were completely solid in one plane, so the overall effect was to turn a Universal Joint into a hinge...), the bearing endcaps has started going around inside the mounting ears, so if we had put some new ones in they would probably ben a bit loose, so we used the Banbury propshaft.
The UJ\'s on the Banbury propshaft felt OK, but since it was on the bench and we were set up to take them out... we took them out and had a look. They fell apart. No grease at all, completely dry and a bit rusty - the only sign of lubricant was some "varnish" on the shafts. As a point of interest this was true at both ends, not just the front. So we put the new UJ\'s in on the Banbury propshaft and put it on. And it works. Simples!
As regards technique, I had never done this before so my friend and ace mechanic Rob showed me how. We took off the circlips (they hide on the inside of the "ears"), put a large socket (big enough to miss the UJ and support the "ears") on the one side and a small socket (small enough to press out the UJ) on the other, then tightened them up in a vice (I just held the long end of the propshaft...). This pushed the one end cap out into the big socket, so we stopped and reversed the procedure to get the opposite cap out, then the other two caps.... and by this time the central cross had room to come out. Fitting was the reverse of the above. Then do the other end...
Net result? Much quieter and no vibration. Another win.
In retrospect, I think these have been "going" for a while, and I have not recognised the gradually increasing noise and vibration for what it was until the UJ actually collapsed.
John