I brought my N17 needles to Joe Curto, SU expert and fellow MGB Club member
(you may have seen his ads in Hemmings under MG, Triumph, etc - he doesn't
do "Jap" SUs and kiddlingly, always reminds me) and told him my problem.
He miked the needle and said they were similar to "SM" needles and then
after a few minutes of thought he said to try "RB" needles. I installed them
and I used my Colortune to adjust the idle mixture. I needed to richen the
settings quite a bit.
Well, after getting the mixtures set and rebalancing the carbs I decided to
give it a pull and whaddya know, the car went to 5000 RPMs smoothly. I went
for a test drive to hear and feel for any flat spots or other anomalies. I
am happy to say there are none and all seems fine. When I break the engine
in I'll go for the redline and see what it does at 6500.
The one thing I noticed however is that my car is running warmer than before
and I have to find out why. I need it to be safety inspected so I'll bring
it to my friend who owns a service station (and a modified TR4 and fellow
club member) and have him hook up an anylizer to the exhaust pipe and see
how it's burning. It could also be due to the fact it's a new engine and it
was the first time it ran hard but I don't think so.
I LOVE the induction roar from the SUs and can bearly hear anything over it
when I nail it. Next is the exhaust to get some noise from behind :) One
thing that I like, and others might not, is all the popping when I
deaccelerate. That's from unburnt gas being sucked into the header and
exhaust ports and then igniting. It reminds me of the TransAm cars I saw
race when my Dad took me to Bridgehampton in the 60s. My stock 1600 did the
same thing so I know it's not just this engine.
If any of you are having problems with their mixture settings and have
running problems and they aren't N17 or the N39s (from 1600s) or M43 or M54s
or N25s I will need a sample to show Joe so he can mike it and examine them
and come up with a needle solution. He isn't infallible but he probably
knows more than almost all of us put together when it comes to SUs. He also
has a huge selection of needles, boxes upon boxes, probably over 100
different ones. He charged me 20 for the pair but he may have been doing me
a favor.
Get in touch with me if you're interested and tell me what the problem is
and what needle you're using.
Now all I need is another crank pulley as mine is bent and it's not the
crank as my neighbor put a dial indicator on the nut while the engine was
running and the crank was straightened too.
Thanks for putting up with all the posts and ramblings and listening to my
problems.
Mike
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