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It's alive...sort of

To: spitfires@autox.team.net
Subject: It's alive...sort of
From: "David Mayer" <celiracer81@hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 01:07:41 +0000
Well hello all,
  I finally had a nice enough day to get the spitfire out from its resting 
place at the end of the driveway this afternoon.  I didn't really have a 
plan yet as to where i was going to start, so i just decided to fire it up.  
To my surprise...it started!!!!  However, it began SPRAYING fuel all over 
the place!!  So i had to push it into the garage.  Tore the float bowls 
apart to find that the front float pin was completely stuck shut.  So i 
fixed that up and tried it again.  Ran pretty well for a while then started 
sputtering.  So here are my problems...
1.)  the timing was off, to i had to retard the timing a little bit.  Now it 
is running much better with out the sputtering and backfiring.  However...i 
noticed that when i lift the cylinder of each carb (dual su's), i get a very 
different response form the engine.  When i lift the cylinder in the front 
carb, nothing really happens.  It runs fine and there is no response to 
speak of.  However, when i lift the rear carb cylinder, the car basically 
stalls out.  I checked the carbs with my tuner thinggy dinggy (yes...that is 
a technical term), and they are pretty darn close to eachother.  So i played 
around with the jets and was able to get it to run a little better yet. But 
i still have that same problem where the rear carb causes some sputtering 
when operated alone.

2.) While it was running pretty well i got antsy and wanted to drive it.  
Oops.  It ran fine for a little while but once i got to the other side of 
the neighborhood, it started running terribly.  Sounded like it was missing 
a LOT.  Almost like i was only running on 2 or 3 cylinders.  I was able to 
hold on to it and get back to my drive way, but at that point it stalled and 
wouldn't turn back on.

Any thoughts on these issues?  i am figuring that the 1st problem just has 
to do with tuning the carbs better but i am not sure.  the second 
problem...i really have nothing to go on.  Possibly compression?  I never 
really checked that now that i think about it.

Thank you in advance.
  Dave Mayer
'68 Spit





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