Here to update again. I'm having to pivot a bit on the seats but I'll get to that a little later.
Wife and I were in Ireland for almost two weeks and got back yesterday, so I haven't been to do anything during that time. But before our trip I pushed to get the car out for at least one drive, and have to say it was quite rewarding.
I was able to put roughly 20 miles of mixed country and in town driving. I'm happy to report that for the most part everything went well. I definitely came away with a list of observations that need working out but most importantly the car is still great fun to drive. My biggest worry being an amateur wrench was that I might've ruined the car and turned it into a mess behind the wheel by taking everything apart and rebuilding myself. But it still handles on rails, brakes well (enough), engine runs nicely and make broad power, shifts are crisp, so on and so forth. Overall very pleased at the moment.
Here are some of my observations, some of which are just interesting but most will require further tinkering. Happily, none of them indicate to me that massive reworks are needed .
-A bit of gas is leaking from around the fuel sender seal. Need to investigate or find better gasket.
-It's been GREAT having the wideband AFR gauge. Cruise is very lean, on the order of 15-16 AFR. I think this is what the Strombergs are designed for basically and I'm not too worried about it. It idles in the mid-14s and and as I put the throttle down the AFR's drop down to the low 12s right away, so I think the carb tuning is in a good place for now.
-I get a steering wheel shake at slightly less than freeway speeds. Alignment still has to be done, but I think some of the wheel balancing weight have fallen off and this is the bigger cause of this issue. Bump steer was not apparent during driving.
-Bonnet is able to be properly aligned but seems to shift while driving, additional fine tuning needed here and will likely have to tighten the mounting hardware much harder than I had been so that it doesn't moved in the slotted frame from bumps.
-Engine revs nicely but falls on its face at 4,000 rpm. I don't think it's fueling because it happens at idle as well, plus when it occurs while driving as soon as I shift it revs up nicely again with power, until hitting 4,000 RPM in the next gear. If I were running the bowls dry because the fuel pump doesn't keep up I would imagine once I run out of fuel at the top of one gear I still would be out of fuel after the upshift. Going to investigate the ignition system some more first. I have a couple ignition coils around here so I'm going to try swapping them out to start.
Pics of it out finally out in the wild. I'm really liking how this car shows in the French Blue.
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