Supercharging the bus Part 3

So. Spent today fitting the engine into the bus. Had a bunch of shits and bits to fix up like fixing up my dizzy, rewiring for the alternator, fitting a new exhaust, adding the electric fuel pump, running new fuel lines, cleaning red dust from everything. In fact it took most of the day just getting everything to the stage where I could fit the engine.

 

I opted to drill and tap my dizzy so that I can dial in the overall advance. Much better than locking it out completely



Annoyingly I also had to fabricate a throttle adjuster / stop as I had failed to realise the DHLA carbs do not have an air bypass circuit and so require a throttle stop to be able to set the idle. D'oh!

Got to say. This is the worst engine install I've done. Normally I can get it in pretty easy (said the actress to the bishop  :lol: ) but this time no matter what I did the engine simply did not want to line up. I must have struggled for half an hour trying to align everything before I finally managed to get the thing home. I recon it's the damn stoopid sump extension that I have fitted - it was in the parts bin left over from a previous project so it got fitted to the bus. The issue is that the jack doesn't sit centrally so the engine doesn't sit right on the jack, which makes fitting the engine a bit of a PITA. Fortunately I picked up some spare flywheels last week so I will make myself up and adaptor for my jack so that the engine sits nice and flat.

By far the most annoying issue was that my 5 minute dash to the local motor shop to pick up some more fuel hose ended up with me stranded for an hour as the damn stoopid immobilizer on the Range Rover decided to play up. Eventually I manged to get the thing started but the remote control has decided take a holiday. Arrrrgh - just what I need - 2 cars off the road. Think It's time to put some rego on the scooter.

With the bus engine finally fitted I checked everything over and found that the banjo fitting to the carby had a hole in it.  This was easily remedied by tapping the hole and fitting an appropriately sized bolt. However, when it came time to fire her up she would not start. I checked the spark - which was okay. Checked that there was fuel getting supplied to the carby, even checked that fuel was getting through the carby into the stacks. The engine would occasionally catch, but not start. This led me to think that the issue was not enough fuel getting through.

So I removed the carby and stripped it down. One can of carby cleaner later I have one cleaned carburettor. I will wait until tomorrow to see if this has fixed my issue.

Thinking aloud - my main concern is that the jets are simply too small / lean to work in this configuration. I had originally assumed that even with incorrect jets the engine would still start, but having never had a blown engine before I'm not 100% sure how the blower will react to incorrect carburetion. (sp?). I'm happy to drill the jets out to get the thing running, but only if I am pretty sure that this is what the issue is.

I will do a bit of reading to see what I can figure out before tomorrow, but it's 12:30, I stink of petrol and carby cleaner and I figure that I probably should get some sleep.

Actually - on a positive note. One thing I was a little concerned about was the belt tracking. My biggest fear was that it would throw the belt. Well, I'm happy to say that the belt stayed put. Yay! one positive to take from today!!