Peter Bell

I have an old valve from a dohc engine if it is the same and if you want to try it. Athough if you have tried others with the same result I doubt if they were all bad. I had a similar problem on my dohc sierra, replaced the valve with a new one and it was just the same. turned out to be the MAP sensor was dying. Peter.

Matt, were you not tempted to go for .ac as it is a very educational site! Peter

I think these solex carbs were fitted to lots of the V6 engines possibly as they were cheaper than the weber. The 2.3L has 25mm chokes and 2.8L 28mm ones, no idea though if the weber jets will fit. Peter

Do you have to differentiate between the bolted, welded and Friar Tuck versions of the Mk1 as well? also stainless and zintec ones? Complicated isn't it! Peter.

Hi Paul, I still do not quite understand this, you are saying that the engine is running rich but to solve it you are putting even bigger main jets in. Have you done a plug test as the man suggested? ie. run the engine hard under load with clean plugs, quickly stop and check the colour? Just as another thought, you say you have blocked off the return line from the carb, you haven't got the feed from the pump going into the return outlet side have you? it has a restrictor in it. Peter p.s. if you go back to a std. DGAV, at full throttle it will flow almost the same amount of air, as the 38 DGAS (usually) has 27mm venturis and the 32/36 DGAS has 26 and 27mm chokes.

If you have the float level set up near recommended then don't worry about it, try smaller main jets. Did you take off a DGAV? then try those jets in the DGAS it will show if you are going the right direction even if they aren't a matched pair. Peter.

Mr T you may try fitting smaller main jets 140 or 135, I have 140 in mine with a 285 cam, flowed head and they still seem a bit rich. My exhaust is as black as your hat (assuming you have a black hat) bear in mind that a DGAV for a standard motor will only have about 130 mains in it. You may have gathered that Jim is not keen on pancake filters, they are fine if they are tall but not possible to fit under a Hoodz hood. Peter.

Sorry Ian I stand corrected (I hope Chris A doesen't see this!) I did think about it at the time but not enough. Back to the original question though it is difficult to come up with a straight forward answer as the springs are usually, except on the 2b sliding pillar, acted upon by some lever mechanism. For instance on the older inboard front suspension cars the lever ratio is about 1:1.2 but even then the springs are not upright so the resultant force is different to that applied. I think the best answer is to find out what others are using with a similar setup, if you can get answers! Peter.

Ian, the springs have to hold up both the unsprung and sprung weights otherwise the body will be sitting on the floor! The unsprung weights are the wheels, brakes and the moveable suspension bitz. (I am missing the ZZZdz!) Peter

The rev counter on my car is playing up, it is the 'old' type with a feed and return to the coil. It started showing the wrong revs as I was driving and now shows 7000 at tick over. I tried fitting a different one (not sure if it is a good one) with a single feed from the coil and it does the same thing. The engine runs fine, anyone any ideas of what is going wrong? Thanks Peter. Should have added it has a bosch dizzy with the hall effect trigger. and been running ok for 6 years!

Hi Mark welcome to the club, hope you have joined? anyway I am pretty sure you can use any rear drive ford wheels (apart from Granadas as they have 5 studs!) so Sierra, Cortina, Crapi. The front drive cars have different offset so ignore those. Some peugeot wheels fit but they have a different size centre hole so should be fitted with a spacer ring thingy. Peter re. SVA you shouldn't have to do it provided the paperwork is correct. I think it would be a lot of hard work to get it through.

At the week-end my mother asked me to take her home from a relatives house, nothing too unusual in that apart from I was in my Hood and she has not been in it before. She turned down offers for a ride in ‘Real’ cars for the 5 mile journey, she quite enjoyed it but thought it was a bit bumpy. Afterwards I remembered I had given my father a ride once when he was 80, he died 2 years later but I don't think it was connected. My mother is now 86, and I wondered if she would be one of the oldest passengers in a Hood. I expect you all know different! Peter.

Tak, start with standard settings I doubt if they will be far out. The cortina used 137 primary main jet, 127 secondary and 170 primary air correction, 125 secondary, 45 primary idle and 60 secondary and was fine on my std. 2l. The Sierra had different settings they will be in the haynes book but I think they were more equal for each choke, probably better for emissions. Peter.

Andy, the diameter of the front discs are the same on 1.6 and 2l, are vented discs necessary on a Hood? and as someone has already said the smaller rear drums mean that you do not have problems locking the rears so the you don't need the pressure reducing valve unit, saves even more weight and complications. Peter

Hi Darren are you sure that the rear toe in figure is for a rear drive car? I would expect it to be either 0 or possibly toe out so as when the wheels are under power it will tend to pull them straight. Peter.

Fred 2b. (or not), before I discovered 'Jims wonderful shims' I had tried fitting washers and found a shim thickness of 0.035” 0.9mm changes the camber by about 1°. but it is a bit of a bodge and as Jim says the load is just taken on the washer diameter. Peter.

Hi Nick, that was my problem as well, I had a DGAV which ran perfectly on the std set up but with the modifed bits it was virtually undriveable, as I had a DGAS I just swapped it over then started playing with that. I don't know the DFTH but I would say you will need bigger idle jets (poss 50?) and mains (poss 140?) for starters, If you don't want to take it to a specialist. Peter.

Hi Joel could you fit the sensor on the drive shaft instead and recalibrate the speedo? at least there you will have reduced the rotational speed by whatever your diff ratio is. I have a bike one with the magnet on the inner CV joint. Peter.

Hi Folks, a bit more info on these carbs, the 38 DGAS has usually 27mm venturis and the 32/36 DGAS has 26 and 27mm ones, so on full opening there is very little difference in the amount of air they will flow. The Dgas does give a much better responsive feel, as for the same throttle movement both barrels open to-gether, but it can give kangaroo results driving slowly over bumpy ground. I expect the Dgav may be more difficult to sort out when any mods are made to the engine, at least with the Dgas both sets of jets will be the same. Just a thought, are you running a std. jetted Dfth on a modified engine? if so your carb may be fine just wrongly set up. Peter. DGAS, Piper 285, flowed injected head.

The other problem with the low ratio diffs i.e. the 4.11 is that with the std. gearbox you are only doing about 22mph at 5000 rpm in first, I find that with a 3.77 ratio 1st gear is a bit too low and quite often just use 2nd to start off with a bit of clutch slipping. Peter

HI Mat, it looks as though it is the same as the piper OHC 134 fast road which claims an increase of about 15 BHP on an injection engine. The duration is just up on the std 2L but lift is higher. Does it come with the followers? Piper fast road for carb engine is the 270, longer duration lower lift with same claimed power increase Peter.

Sounds like poorly set up carbs to me too, where abouts are you UJTS? Peter

Sorry Jon, are you sure it was trying to centre or was it swinging onto full lock? Peter

Ask the big man above your posting! Peter.

I had the warping disc problem on a Sierra with vented discs, it got worse really quickly. They distort inwards where the vents are, hard to measure but new discs sorted it completely.