Clipper - Out of ideas and in need of help

Hello, firstly here is a list of the things I have done to my 1.8 '92 Clipper with Weber conversion:

New fuel filter
Oil filter
Oil change
New Air filter
New fuel pump
Cleaned breather gauze and drilled extra holes
Cleaned and refurbished carb with servicing kit - oil around mixture screw and crap in one of the jet chambers
Adjusted floats in carb from around 20mm to 8mm
Blown air through fuel lines with a compressor (little fag lighter one so not proper strong) heard bubbles in tank.
Bypassed reservoir (to no effect)
Compression test which read (in bars) 14 15 14 15

My symptoms are as follows (choke always half on):

Immediate stalling upon ignition when cold - two or three times before it becomes 'stable'
Irratic tickover, especially when lifing off the accelerator - sometimes stalls but then fires up again when clutch raised
Sometimes open throttle at slow speeds results in no change in speed
Once warm if driven at high revs car is fine and sounds great
Kangarooing and looking like a failed driver lol

My symptoms with choke off:

Press accelerator - Stall
Start car - Stall
Look at choke - Stall

You can hear/feel the lack of petrol until throttle is fully open, but unless the car is warm even open throttle doesnt have the pull it used to, but even that is said on a general basis and sometimes it is better than others, but never great and I don't trust it in the slightest.
 
Problems began when it sucked a hefty amount of oil/petrol in to the air filter housing after an 80 mile round trip. Loss of revs, weakness under load etc. Since that is has been nothing but problematic.

I wonder maybe I should reset the floats to the 20mm they were before? or somewhere in the middle? It did used to run very well before all of this, but when I serviced the carb I adjusted the float height, the only thing I have altered really. What happens if you set the floats too high?

I have read loads about crap in the tank, does it sound like that's what it is? Petrol flow seems fine I half filled a pint glass in 10seconds from the pump. I can blow down the fuel line easily and hear bubbles in the tank. I removed the back seat just but will have to wait until morning before I can check the fuel tank.

Sorry to those who have read my other threads, this is the last one I post before I take it to a garage and start spending money I have been saving to drive it around Europe. I really am running out of ideas, especially having no experience and very little money, it's hard. I'm depending on an oracle to save my faith

Thanks,

Dan

I've just taken the car for a bit of a drive, if I stamp on the accelerator from idle the car sort of 'vrum-vrums' (lol) before it revs, as though I firstly tapped the pedal before depressing it more.

I've taken that cover off under the back seat and had a look in the petrol tank, I didn't see as much of it as I expected to be able to but what I could see was properly clean with not a spec of anything in there. I didn't see a filter to remove or anything though as the *how to* clean that blockage thread suggests I should.

I'm thinking maybe a electrical fault now? As I think I have checked every part of the fuel system and nothing I do makes any difference.

Whilst driving today if I planted the accelerator it would stay at about 3000revs in 4th at around 45mph for a about 3 seconds before collecting revs rather rapidly, though it did speed up it didn't seem to be inkeeping with the noise it was making. It's hard to tell though because I'm so used to driving it like this I forget I how it used to behave.

Any ideas?

have you checked your timing with a strobe??

if this isn't correct then you can expience a lag when you stick your foot down

hth

Cheers for your reply.

I haven't checked the timing yet no, sometimes it's very responsive though? With the choke half on it doesn't do it either, so I don't know.

I have Carbon on the spark plugs, is that from driving with the choke on? or the floats being too high?

If it is running rich can it be a fuel starvation problem?!

I will replace Dizzy and rotor, plugs, leads and ignition coil in that order and see what happens.

How do you check the timing? With choke on it seems to be fine, and sometimes it drives quite well but only when you boot it really.

Dan.

Drove it just - 5th gear foot to the floor got up to 3000rpm and then the rev counter started to fall, changed to 4th and it was ok changed to 5th again and no drop in rpm to 5000.

If I stamp the throttle a couple of times each time I press the accelerator it seems to work better?

But everything is just on an 'if and when' basis. It is always sh!t though, just in varying degrees.

Think you may have done somthing to your carb, either when it fired a load of fuel and oil at your air filter or when you cleaned it up.

Your fault does sound like its timing related, but if you had no problems before your carb issue, then it should still be fine now.

my experiance with carbs is not a good one, had similar problems to yours, and it turned out to be a damaged jet I think.

Cheers for your reply,

When I removed the jets one of the longer ones left a piece behind in the chamber. When I shone a torch down there to have a look I saw it, caked in oil and stuff. I fished it out and cleaned it and it just clipped back in to the bottom of the jet, so I assumed it was ok. To be honest when I found that I thought I had solved the puzzle, but of course I hadn't.

Is that jet broken then? If so how do you go about buying more?!

I changed the distributor cap and rotor arm today and it is running better, my old ones were mashed. But it is still not good.

I changed the plugs also but didn't really alter much.

Anyone know where to get good HT leads from? Preferably blue or red ones  8)

if your jet is broken then that will be the fault it will just be flooding the car on heavey throttle response as it will be just dumping loads of petrol into the carb and flooding the engine,when you rev it slowly it will rev up ok as its not putting in as much fuel as it would as if your full throttle

Update incase it helps anyone out

This is what has happened (I think):

Breather gauze in rocker cover got blocked up and the resulting pressure filled my air box with sh!tty oil, which made its way into my Weber and dirtied it up.

Dismantling the carb enough to install the entire refurb kit isn't enough, oil stays somewhere in the carb and just screws it up.

I took out each of the jets whilst the carb was on the car and sprayed a bugger load of carb cleaner in each of the holes, replaced the jets and started it up. Rev the engine at the throttle on the carb and put hand over the top to choke it, just before it dies rev it hard and remove your hand, this sucks all the crap out. Done that about 5 times.

I also had my girlfriend revving the engine at the side of the M6 whilst I sprayed more cleaner into the top of the carb when I lost power again, which seems to have sorted it completey.

Car is now running like a beast wahey!