OK. I admit it. I neglected my '80 Spitfire. And now it's making
me pay.
I didn't run it for about 6 weeks, when a tire went bad and it's
battery was taken for use in another car. I finally bought a new
set of tires. (Thanks mjb, Jim Muller, and Dan Mutchler for your
suggestions. -- I ended up getting Yokohama A001s. By the way,
is it true that they're not going to make these any more in the
175/70-13 size? That's what the guy at the tire rack told me,
anyway. He claimed that when the current stock was gone, that
would be it.)
So, with the new tires mounted and a new battery, I was all ready
to get her back on the road, BUT ... she seemed to be running way
too rich, running very rough. I pulled the plugs after a bit of
this, and sure enough, fouled plugs. No problem, I thought. Just
need a bit of a carb adjustment.
I cleaned and re-gapped the plugs, and adjusted and topped up the
carb. No improvement. Made a further adjustment to lean. Still
no change, and, in fact, maybe getting worse. So, I decided to make
a cursory check of the choke (OK - not stuck) and carb (seems OK -
fuel level is not obviously wrong, and piston moves freely). No
leaks apparent, which I checked by spraying some carb cleaner around
the gaskets. (However, by this time things were running so rough it
was hard to tell exactly what was going on.)
Finally, in complete frustration, I put on the Colortune. Sure
enough, *very* yellow combustion. No amount of carb adjustment
makes any change whatsoever in the color.
So what the h**l is going on? I have a feeling that I'm overlooking
something simple, since the car was running just fine two months ago.
The carb was rebuilt a couple of years ago, and has run very well
until now.
Please help get this novice mechanic out of this mess!
Peter Lee
petel@cs.cmu.edu
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