clubstylus

That Sytec fuel pressure regulator is working a charm. I'm finally getting to grips with the magic little box that is a DCOE. It's easier once you realise that balancing, tuning and idle mixture adjustment all describe completely separate processes!

Car's running nicely now on all but wide open throttle from idle, so that's either rich or lean from the accelerator pump. Need to have a look and see how much is being squirted in via each barrel tomorrow. It's fine if you rev off idle gradually, but not if you just whack it open from 900rpm.

Excuse the horribly compressed audio, but you get the idea...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_taF_9Kirh0

First event of the season is next Sunday... no pressure to get it running perfectly then!

Went out and did some investigation at lunch.

Pulled the air filters off and with engine off and a torch to see down the carb barrels whacked the throttle open. Only 1 of the 4 accelerator pump jets had a steady flow of fuel, so that's the culprit. Removed the jets and repeated - all 4 barrels got a good slug of fuel so at least I know the pump circuit is working ok.

The jets themselves had a little crud in places which I guess had been washed out of the circuit by the fresh petrol after I'd cleaned the carbs. Because of the relief valve in the circuit it had pushed the crud as far as the jets, gummed them up and was then venting itself back into the main reservoir.

Jets currently sat in a bath of carb cleaner again for refitting later on. Fingers crossed.

Sorted Fired straight up and idled just fine once warmed up. Started raining though, so a bit more tweaking to do on Friday and I need to get some miles on the car before racing on Sunday.

All sounds good for the weekend's competition then

Hoping so! One eye on the weather forecast though!!

When it comes to rough running, one one of our setups using the standard Ford ECU we experienced 2 cylinder only behaviour and evetually traced it back not to dodgy wiring as Id expected but to the ECU itself - took the lid off and could see the PCB visibly burned on its way to the coil. Turns out that this is a common fault with these ECUs and one of the lessons learned is regards to fusing and looking after the ends of the wires when messing around with it all. Luckily We were able to find another ECU together with matching key and got iit all running again without problems even though the code number of the ECU was quite different to the previous - still has to be plug compatible with the original ECU plug though of course (4 rows of pins vs 3 as they are on some cars)

My sporadic use over the summer (our sealed surface events tend to be at the start and end of the year allowing for drier weather at the summer loose surface events) means that after the last event in August and my time being taken up with sailing, decorating and a multitude of other things, the carbs dried out again and the remaining fuel jelly clogged the accelerator pumps.

I've just cleaned it out and all's fine, but I'm wondering if there's any harm in switching the fuel pump off before the ignition and running the carbs dry when parking up for any length of time? After all, I do this religiously for my outboard and it's all the happier for it.

When my Stylus was on carbs , it was left through the winter for 5 to 6 mths without use but never had any carb issues. Maybe the tank is dirty or the fuel is not great. Personally I never use fuel from any super market or non major companies. I only used BP Ultimate or Shell V Power.

Tank is definitely on its way out, but it's not crud that's the problem it's gloopy jelly from evaporated fuel settling in the bottom of the float bowl. Not sure why it should be so prone to it, but there you go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diXrh2YIhjk

PS. It usually gets filled up on stuff from the local Gulf as we're not blessed with a glut of petrol stations out our way

Almost all fuel comes in by barge so I expect most places are buying their stock from Isle Of Wight Fuels rather than shipping it themselves by road as they would normally.

I never saw my ones get that bad.

could be an idea to get one of those vacuum pumps and suck the fuel out between using it?

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/prod ... -051712030