Time flys and its that time again for more talk of Bangers from around the world. There has been much banger activity with me this month. You might want to be sitting comfortably for this as it gets a little complicated. The engine that was in the coupe is now in the roadster and the roadster engine is in the coupe. The head that was on the roadster engine that was originally in the coupe is now back in the coupe but on the engine that was originally in the roadster. The head that was on the roadster engine that is now in the coupe is back on the engine that came in the roadster. The inlet that was originally on the coupe engine that is now in the roadster is back in the coupe but fitted to the engine that came in the roadster. The YC Mallory that came on the roadsters engine is still attached to the roadster engine but that engine is now in the coupe, as stated above. Got it? The coupe was brung out of storage. It already had the bare 'B' engine fitted. I assembled it with bits that had been accumulated, which included stock 'A' exhaust with Aries exhaust, single Ansen inlet with a 94, the Lion head off my engine and an old YC Mallory. I hate Mallory's. The Mallory that came with it was missing its rotor, which is odd as I'm sure it had one. I replaced it with a modern Mallory one which fitted. The contacts in the cap weren't the best but it was OK. I hate Mallory's. Turned it over, nothing. Turned it over, nothing. I hate Mallory's. Check for a spark, nothing. I hate Mallorys. Took the cap off and the rotor had exploded inside the dizzy, the shaft had excessive play, the points didn't look to healthy etc etc. Threw that in the bin with the other Mallory. Did I mention that I hate Mallorys? Decided to use the Vertex from my engine. Timed it up. Turned it over, VROOOOM. Run lovely, then it would run at all, then it was nice again, then it wouldn't start. At one point we had the accelerator to the floor and it would barely idle. The carb was blamed and without a better replacement it was checkmate. Things didn't end there. What is a fully rebuilt unrun engine, though no surprise originally coming from the roadster, has turned out to be close to scrap. The block is cracked in 3 places. Notice where the filler was been chipped away. Notice the smoothness under the weep, even more filler. With that fluids were drained and the coupe was put back in storage. One other thing. What is it with copper head gaskets they never ever seal. Moving on to the roadster. I'I have now gone over to a Winfield from the Lion. Why? No other reason really than I fancied a change. I have also gone back to dynamo from the alternator that was on it and a stock looking but highly modified 'A' water pump from the V8 conversion because I wanted to go back to a mechanical fan from the electric one. I have always suffered from excessive blow-back through the breather when using high revs for extended periods of time and no my rings are not worn. Asking around it seemed like this was a design fault that even the factory recognised as the breather tube design changed several times through production. Many ideas were suggested like fitting stovebolt 6 breathers and the like as they directed the blow-back away from the engine compartment. I wasn't keen on this as it seemed like a band aid rather than fixing the cause of the problem. I ended up in contact with Spence Darby who has raced his 28/29 'A' woody "splinterbox" in The Great Race several times. He suggested I look into the Bill Stripe breather ( www.specialtymotorcams.com ) as he has one on his woody. Interesting as I always thought this item was just a dress-up item. The theory is that with the great increase in area inside the breather (see photo above) more time is allowed for the oil mist to condense and run back into the engine. You may or may not agree with that (Brent?) but the theory seems sound to me and I'm desperate to try anything!
you have been very busy Clark i have been gradualy working through the sqeeks and rattles on my a getting better,,,, the biggest culprit was the bumpers no fitted some rubber between the clamps so it all tightens up better,, my 28 roadster has only one rear light as fitted at the factory not too bright at night , instead of fitting another drum light i am fitting some modern led lights between the two parts of the rear bumper,, they are clear when off and red when on,,, so when they are not bweing used they arn't so in ya face,, the engine is getting stronger and stronger it pulls very well current spec sur1 cam stainless valves 16lb off the flywheel,, std carb head and exhaust it only realy runs well with 2 turns on the dash mixture screw any less gets some huge backfires ( too lean) and also i dont think there is enough advance on the std adjustment on the steering wheel as it runs every where on max advance and only runs worse if the ignition is retarded have to check to see the timing,, but did drive 250 miles the other weekend and apart from a very out of balence front wheel I love it as for my baby flathead the austin it needs a new fuel pump it is a 6v su type which has been running on 12v for 2 years so i cant realy blame it for sulking
I still cant figure out why the dual up-drafts won't work right... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1335840#post1335840
Running two different carbs can't be helping. I know they are similar but you wouldn't run a 97 and a 94 on the same manifold would you? I've messed around with twin updrafts and mine ran just as erratic as your set-up. Because you have gone straight in with twin carbs it is harder to diagnose the fault. Can you bolt on a stock manifold to try each carb individually? Then you can set-up each carb individually and know they both are running sweet. I wanted to go this route with mine but couldn't because of the tube header. Are sure its carbs at all? 99% of engine problems are ignition.
That's odd. Might be worth trying them individually again. Maybe somethings changed? Long shot but what about the secondary well in the zenith? Its the accelerator circuit side of the carb. It is trigger by a change of vacuum simple by a hole in the well called a "vacuum breaker". With the twin carbs you would have a change in vacuum, so could the carb just be dumping excess fuel into the intake? Or I could be talking rubbish as other people have run this set-up successfully!
Yeah...bit of a quiet Banger meet this month, yet the very first one from January is back in circulation. Strange that..... Went racing last weekend and posted a weekend best of 19.1 @ 68mph, which was a bit disappointing as I've been in the 18's before at a touch over 70. Having said that, the temperature was over 32 degrees which can never be a good thing. I did post the video of that run somewhere on this board but I'll be damned if I can remember where I put it!
you guys make me awfully jealous next month i might have something to talk about keeping my fingers crossed zach heres the videos i think artiki http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118573
well spent a few hours in the company of the little austin and the big blue model a sorted the austin mystery missfire out the points were only just opening and were a bit pitted so reset the points and set the distributer for the best idle and it goes like a train ( well a very small one) finaly went one flat leaner on the su carbs and went for another drive ,, goes even better with a hint of backfire on the over run so it's possibly about as lean aas i wish to go,, now i decided to reset the timing on the a as i thought it was too retarded ,,, so follows the destructions used the timing pin and it was too retarded set the timing again now it goes much better it runs best around town with the timing lever about 1/2 to 3/4 advanced has a great slow tick over and easily pulled 60 mph before the undamped front end got a bit excited so thats the next thing balence the wheels and find some dampers
Sounding good. Balancing my 'A' wheels made a HUGE improvement, put it to the top of list. Never really noticed much difference between running with and without dampers. It just bounced alittle longer when going over speed humps. What dampers are you thinking of?
Alrighty, in reply to 4ever4 and The37kid and the rest of you banger nuts... So the other day I went out and tore the engine down. Almost. I pulled the plugs. It's running rich and their gapped 35-38! way too much but that shouldn't effect anything as quick as 1 day. Checked the points. filed all contact points in the dizzy and cap. Good spark jump. Compression test with all plugs out. 60-60-45-60 Hmmm... That 3rd cylinder aint great but it should still perform better that it was. We figured we flooded out that cyl. and if it had a stuck ring it never built up the oil on the cylinder wall again. The Revalation Before I did the manifold change, someone drove the A about a mile with NO WATER. Ok. no real damage, bubbled paint, so what. Me thinks the condenser prolly got fried. It could hold enough juice to idle fast but not enough for higher RPMs when you step on the gas. It was a real bad day, but I learned a lot about Model A's. I guess that's the important thing. The Miller manifold is back on the shelf until Christmas when I can work on it again. Stock manifold and carb are on it now, just waiting for a condenser. If anyone has a rare or unusual flat cylinder head they might let go to a young kid for cheap, let me know. She needs more compression too. Thanks guys for getting me through this and letting me vent. lol
spent an evening trying to get to grips with the zenith on my a to sort out a low speed missfire and having to run about 2 turns on the mixture adjustment,, this is all new to me , so i dropped the bottom off the carb unscrewed all the jets blew them out then i found the idle jet feed tube was split the whole length,, so replaced it with a pattern one i was given ,,, it didnt look quite the same but the lengths and holes looked about right. i set the float height which was about right,,,and put it all back together it now runs much better,,, the idle is slower and more even it pulls so much better from nothing and it also runs with only one turn on the mixture adjustment without any back firing i can only assume that air was being pulled in through the crack in the idle jetcausing a weaker mixture,,, it's a much nicer car to drive,, now to stop the noisy floorboards and balence the wheels
BTT Well, I had a busy banger month, I made it back home and was able to play with the ole girl again, I got back in time to fit an earlyish 60's F100 steering box to it, and then swapped my stock head for a 6:1 Lion, I'm running a pair of 1 1/32 Stromburgs it's running a little rich still but with the new head made the world of differance, sorted some ign probs out, and drove it down to a show at the Gold Coast, Wintersun about 220 Miles each way, only prob is now that it's running a bit better it's boiling, I suspect it's because the water pump is spinning too fast still has stock pulley, So aside from having to restrict my cruising speed all went well, I ran around Brisbane for the week after and had a ball, the little car was running well and steering great! The day after getting home I would have smoked the car had I not gone to Church (I was being looked after ) cause when I left got a block or two down the road and it started running like a hairy goat, wouldn't run or idle, looked down through the floor to see a stream of fuel running onto the headers!! The night before coming home the exhaust was glowing red. Fortunately it was still cold and HADN'T had time to heat up, had I been in it for a while it would have been a smokin big time. It turned out to be the fuel fitting into the fuel bowl on the rear carb, just so happened I had a spare carb in the trunk and enough tools to do the job, only the spare carb was full of crap, so made a fuel bath and made one out of two. got it going enough to get home. I think that there was still some rubbish in the main fuel passage as it just wouldn't run, only by changing the body/fuel bowl section over did it sort it's self out. And within a week driving home from town it started knocking, and missing, it sounded like ole henry was inside makeing some adjustments, so it's now been parked and havn't pulled it down to investigate. Won't be home till next year now, so it'll havta sit til then. Got another project to work on now, not a banger but an early aussie inline 6. Outback
Yeah, strange one this month. Oh well, almost August. Maybe everybody is saving up their tales for then....
Well as long as all of us banger guys are here i want to know if any of you guys know anyone who has any russian banger motors, and how about a funk head? anyone know someone who has one? -Chris
I know were there is a russian motor with a funk head but the guy wont sell it. Man i want that thing bad!!!!
Okay, you're going to have to educate me a little on this one. I'm familiar with the Russian motors but what's a Funk head?
A 'Funk' was an avaition conversion of the A/B engines made by the Funk brothers, Joe and Howard. What made them stand out was that they were converted to run upside down! I believe the first one made was based on an 'A' block and from then on they were converted diamond B engines.
Some New Zealand news is that I have been working on my pick up. I had to build a new chassis after finding that the existing one was racking and popping my radiator apart. Well I could have strengethened the existing one but I wanted to fabricate my own. A mate folded up some rails in his press, I deleted the front kick up but fabricated a sweeping rear kick up. I have step boxed the frame and also fabricated an early Ford V8 style centre X member. The running gear will remain the same however I have scored a Winfield head and I might install an MSD 6AL ignition up to the Mallory electronic dizzy. The body work is getting a general tidy up and other than that the car will remain the same. Got some other banger stuff on the boil too.
Nice one, Clark. Very interesting stuff. They look really weird, do any of those planes still exist? ForEverFour, I installed a MSD 6A earlier in the year and it's great. Don't forget that you'll also need a Blaster coil. You get something like 45,000 volts at the coil and the plugs will need opening up to around 60 thou. Obviously, a stock A dynamo hasn't got the balls to power it. You'll either need an alternator (Urgh) or a high output dynamo.
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