2tone

Like a number of others, I'm gonna pull my engine and fix, clean, renew and paint a number of things in and around the engine bay.

My chassis is currently half painted (the bits I can see) with por 15 (black), but silver looks better I think, so I've painted some of it silver.
However, today I took the crossmember off and sprayed it white to match the car and it looks great, so I'm now looking at painting the rest of the chassis white as well.

Opinions please?

X reg S3 N/A on Telly Last Night, on Ashes to Ashes

does anyone else have to sit for about 10 seconds or so with the ignition on for the SU fuel pump to stop clicking? I'm wondering if I should have a check vavle in the line somewhere?

Dear all,

I have been scratching my head over why my S3 N/A is running on only 3 cylinders (number 4 bad), more notable during idle and initial acceleration.

Checks done so far;

Compression - 160psi
Spark - OK

Carbs, here's where I think I have a problem, when I screw in the idle screw on carb no. 4, nothing happens to the engine note, whereas if I screw in any of the other 3 screws it nearly kills the engine. I've checked out the jets, blown carb cleaner through and fed a wire down the passageways to see if they were blocked. All fuelways seem to be clear, but when I take the progression (brass) screw off, there doesn't seem to be any flow, so I checked to see if I have a suction to create a venturi and I have.

Any ideas where I should go from here?

Right I'm on a real downer, just changed my head gasket and it's lasted 30 miles, the previous one lasted 200miles.

Start at the begining;

I managed to cook the head a few weeks ago (radiator pipe went), so at the same I decided to do a bottom end rebuild as it was also blowing a bit of oil past the rings on hard acceleration.

So after new rings, liners, big ends, a head reskimming and all valves re-cut (by alex carrs - a first class outfit), I managed to do 200 miles before It seemed to pick up a misfire. On checking cylinders 2 & 3 they were down at 60ish psi. No sign of any mayonaise in the oil though, but there was quite a leak from the head gasket underneath the exhaust manifold.

So off with it's head this weekend (getting a dab hand with it now), and another new gasket ordered from SJ's. I checked to see if the head was straight (as a die) before giving everything a good clean, I fitted the new gasket, torqued it to the new procedure, (ie. 15in/lbs, 75degs, 40degs & 5 mins later another 20degs.). Took it out for a spin (didn't go above 2000rpm as I'm still running it in). That was Saturday, took it get some petrol today and I felt the misfire again, behold, mayonaise!!!!!! 30 miles I've done.

What am I missing?