Fellow Floggers-
Well, I dislodged the local spider populace out of the TVR, hung a new pine
tree from the mirror, and went over the hill to the Chico British car
hoop-de-doo. For those of you not aquatinted with Northern California,
Chico is out in the middle of the...the ...ah... heat. Actually, it was a
nice day and they had maybe 150 cars there. Several Jagrolets (somehow
Corvaur hits just the wrong timbre), the usual assortments of TR's, Ford
GT-40's, MG's, AH's, Loti and the like, even a RR made a showing. Amongst
the oddballs, no I mean the cars..., was a "Dellow". Supposed to be one of
two. Looked kinda like a cross between a Jowett Jupiter and an Allard K2,
Vauxhall powered. Amazing restoration if you think about it. We have
trouble finding trim pieces for mass produced cars, where do you find a
piece for a car when there were only two made ?
Also, a little closer to home, was a GT6. I tried to find the owner to do a
little lie swappin, but he wasn't about to admit ownership. The interesting
thing about this car was the fact that it had a set of TR6 carbs and
MANIFOLD on it. It took me a second to realize just what an undertaking the
swap had been. He (or she, gotta be PC these days), did a fair amount of
grinding on the bottom of the flange at the head side, and mounted the
manifold to the head upside down. This allowed the carbs to "droop" enough
so that the hood would clear the tops of the carbs. (Well almost...even
though the edges of the damper nut had been turned off at an angle, you
could just see the "dimple" in the hood. Close, but no cigar.)
This got me to thinking, always a dangerous state of mind. If the ports on
both the head and manifold can be matched up this way, a little judicious
angle milling of the mounting flanges at both ends, would not only drop the
carbs a little further, but also get them back nearer their more efficient
levels (I seem to remember 4 degrees as being stock). As it was on this
car, the carbs were angled about 10-15 degrees in the wrong direction.
What about it, anyone out there tried this ? Is this common knowledge and
I'm waay behind the curve, or what ?
Been upside down in more than one project...
Nick in Nor Cal
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