No 54's Journey

[ChrisP]

Oh and by the way, put plenty of return springs on it. I have three, two you will see in the picture and one on the other side where the cable comes in. You definitely do not want the throttle jamming open on one of these monsters. Been there and got the tee shirt. That pair of trousers was never any use again!

[Lloyd Barnes]

Oh and by the way, put plenty of return springs on it. I have three, two you will see in the picture and one on the other side where the cable comes in. You definitely do not want the throttle jamming open on one of these monsters. Been there and got the tee shirt. That pair of trousers was never any use again!

Brilliant, that makes sense regarding the linkage. I'll have a crack at that this weekend. Appreciate the pics, thanks Chris. Noted re the springs, they're daft enough when you have control of the throttle!

[KevinW]

I think it might be Lee. The twin set up is a pair of 600s as Chris says. Mine's actually a 7.4 litre motor now as you can't get the original stroke crank so I had no option but to put a slightly longer stroke in it.

Useful info, thanks Chris. Can I ask how you locked the two carbs together? There's a slot in the linkage at the moment for the front carb. Did you lock that out or scrap the entire thing and start again. When I got the motor there was a tonne of old rod ends and stuff so I'm guessing it was run locked together before.

19BTDC at idle? Wow thats a lot. My plan was to set the idle up with a vac gauge and see where that puts it, then dial in the total advance on the street. Either that or find someone who knows these motors/carbs with a rolling road.

Mine is a crazy advance at idle - i am not sure if the markings on the crank pulley are correct.
I had a huge amount of trouble with the (non-MSD) spark box I fitted, mainly because the diagram provided and they way it was set up was wrong, so I disconnected it, and it ran lovely after that. But the timing settings on the timing gun look crazy.
I've therefore set mine up on the vac gauge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35-3vgOAR4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGI91KjqiTU

This was after I discovered I had forgotten to plug one of the vac ports (doh!) and it was running rich. After the tune up shown in the vids I have been getting 12+mpg, up from 6mpg! Good eh?!
I haven't been able to get vac advance to work at all yet though.

[ChrisP]

Mine is a crazy advance at idle - i am not sure if the markings on the crank pulley are correct.
I had a huge amount of trouble with the (non-MSD) spark box I fitted, mainly because the diagram provided and they way it was set up was wrong, so I disconnected it, and it ran lovely after that. But the timing settings on the timing gun look crazy.
I've therefore set mine up on the vac gauge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35-3vgOAR4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGI91KjqiTU

This was after I discovered I had forgotten to plug one of the vac ports (doh!) and it was running rich. After the tune up shown in the vids I have been getting 12+mpg, up from 6mpg! Good eh?!
I haven't been able to get vac advance to work at all yet though.

I might have a play over the weekend. I've got the get the vacuum gauge out anyway as I need to check the carbs after messing with the choke horns and stubstacks. Nice to double your mpg! On a sensible car that would save a lot of money. Not quite so much on a cobra! I get between 6 and 12 depending on how I'm feeling. It's usually closer to 6!!!

[KevinW]

- still really running mine in, its a very tight engine, so i think there is a bit more that I squeeze out once thigns start to relax.
It runs very high oil pressure till warmed up, but once its warmed up (up abovve 70 degrees, and oil pressure down to around 25psi at idle) , then you can tel she's really happy and wants to give it the beans. I have so far resisted on anything 'silly' as a replacement is now completely out of my price range.

[jon1d]

Out of curiosity I checked my vacuum with a vacuum gauge following rolling road set up to see if the vacuum gauge made any difference. I tried idle screw mixtures adjustments and this was spot on with no adjustment required so you know using a vacuum gauge is a good reference for idle mixture.
The benefit of a rolling road is to check secondary opening and Air Fuel Mixture for your jets. My main gains were achieved with advancing of the timing. This is set up using pinking detection and retarded. The advance was adjusted by some 10 degree more advance with a large increase in Torque and final BHP. My set up is Ford 351c with Holley 262 road cam. 22 mpg achieved going too Le-man which was a surprise. We were taking our time 70 mph most of the run.
The cam overlap makes a big difference on your vacuum reading. Mild cams are usually 12-15 Hg but I know you can get as low as 6-8 Hg with race cams.