The evening of the day I got Leroy through registration, I timed a quick photoshoot on the rooftop of a car park at my work, to golden-hour perfection
Had a blast fanging around the Inner West with Leroy’s previous custodian, Jodie too, then set about the task of slowly ironing out a few little bugs.
Wiper motor came apart to clean oxidation on the armature and brushes, as well as a good soak of the supporting bushes to get it spinning a little quicker.
Through some wheeling and dealing, I also managed to get my hands on a refurbished Stromberg carb for the right price, in the name of chasing the hesitation at lower engine speed and slightly erratic behaviour under load that I’d diagnosed earlier.
It arrived with a 047 main jet, which I swapped out for 051 then got to tinkering. After trying 053 and even an 055 jet from a 161 carb (out of curiosity - it ran terribly), I settled on 53.
As there are a few unknowns (slightly warm ‘towing’ cam grind, the ex Falcon HEI distributor with advance curve reportedly suited to wilder cam specs and cheapie 4-1 exhaust extractors), getting a good tune established was always going to take some doing.
The one thing I soon realised that the larger distributor cap meant I ran out of static advance when the dizzy cap clip hit the engine side cover before the motor reached ‘over advance’. With a slight hesitation still evident and no pinging heard, I moved the leads clockwise one step around the cap and established a new position for No. 1 cylinder, allowing more advance. Although the vacuum advance pod is now quite close to the column shift linkages, they never foul.
Oh and I also reset all the valve clearances hot which quietened things down a lot
Finally, I’ve got the Grey singing and it pulls away from idle in any gear without complaint! Idles slow and smooth and the thing even starts pretty well when hot.
After also chasing away a gearbox leak (the drain plug needed nipping up!), we hit the road to bed the motor in on Saturday, visiting Greg up in NW Sydney who was in the middle of painting his V8 EK sedan
as well as Rob (ardiesse) who took the controls for a spin, before getting the tools out to help fix my ill-adjusted top steering column bearing and previously non-cancelling indicators too
With about 180 miles under its belt now, the motor is freeing up and the whole car is behaving really well. I’ve got a bit more tweaking of the wheel alignment to do but it’s very driveable.
Tonight I added a USB port to so i can charge my iPhone which also plugs into an Aux cable for the retro head unit.
Next up: time to find a set of venetians! And maybe even paint up the sun visor I have set aside... summer is as unforgiving as ever it seems! Otherwise I’m loving this car
Cheers, Joe
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