Fitting alloy carburettor mounts

It's been a while since I last posted on this item. This was mainly due to the fact that 't Kreng was occupying the drive and I didn't fancy carrying my tools to the shed for several evenings. But with 't Kreng tucked away for the time being and the weather not being that brilliant yesterday, I took the opportunity to start work on the DHC.

First items that I wanted to replace where the rubber carburettor mounts. As you can see in the pictures below the rubber is starting to crack. From the outside it looked like they probably should have some life left in them, but with Club Triumphs 10 Countries Run coming up in September, I thought it would be better not to take any risks here. Glad I did, not only were there the visible cracks appearing on the outside, but the inside also showed some cracks. And the sealing lips were starting to fall apart.

Removing the carburettors was straightforward. Only problem I encountered was the choke cable, which was starting to fray at the end. But that could wait till the carburettors were back on. First there were the new mounts to fit. I have to admit I was a bit anxious here, but I needn't have worried there. They fitted perfectly to the manifold ...

After which it was a matter of refitting in reverse order. But getting all mounting nuts for the carburettors on the studs was a bit of a pain. Access and serviceability clearly wasn't high on the priority list when the carburettor lay-out was designed for these cars. And nearly ran into a problem. When I designed the mounts I used 45mm long bolts to fit the two parts together and to act as mounting studs for the carburettors. As this was only marginally longer compared to the original mounts, I didn't think much of it. Until I fitted the carburettors that is. Let's say the remaining room between carburettor  and stud is marginal !

With the carburettors in place there remained all connections to be restored. All straight forward, except the choke cable. As mentioned earlier it was starting to fray at the end with some strand being broken just above the mounting pin. I first wanted to replace the inner cable with a new one. But I first tried to solder the fraying together. Usually this doesn't work to well, but this time I was lucky. The cable slid into its designated holes without any problems.

During the restoration of the car I tried some old discarded ball joints from 't Kreng's Webers in an attempt to smoothen the accelerator-pedal-action a bit. This worked so well that I forgot the ball joints were rather worn. As the linkage was accessible now I decided to fit a new linkage rod I purchased from Webcon. Even with the linkage rod being as accessible as can be, with the engine in the car, it still was a bit of a fiddle to get it fitted properly. Some very fine open ended 8mm spanners certainly came in handy here (for comparison's sake the original linkage alongside the up rated one ...

Next on the to do list for this car is fitting the air box and filters. At least the base plate for the air filter  is ready now ...