Fire in the Hole! Well sort of. We have been working on getting this engine running for some time. The focus in this video is the ignition. We suspected that the distributor was installed 180 degrees out, so we pulled the distributor and its drive. We flipped the drive gear over so that the larger “half” was on the top and reinserted it into the housing. Reinstalled the distributor and connected the spark plug wires and fired it. The engine ran but was very rough with considerable knocking and banging around. Looks like the ignition issues may be corrected, so now it is time to turn our attention to the carburetors and the fuel side of things.
The 5/16″-24 x 3 1/2″ Bolt used to withdraw the distributor drive needs to be threaded into the drive dog BEFORE the black housing is removed! Also, attention needs to be paid to the proper replacement of the distributor mounting plate – the bolt head must face the front of the car – NOT the nut!
This video Episode Twenty-five provides a summary of the process of correcting the orientation of the distributor drive dog and the firing of the engine: https://vimeo.com/774454868/69e2fc7381
Carburetor Tuning – Video Episode Twenty-six covers the tuning of the HS2 SU carburetors on the Bugeye. We discovered that turning the jets down an equal number of turns on each carb did not produce equivalent results, so we instead measured the the depth of the jet from the bridge in each carb body. While we will surely do some more fine tuning, we ended the video with each of the jets down 2.5mm. The throttle adjusting screws were set to synchronize the two carbs using an air flow meter. The end result was pretty smooth idling and running with the idle at about 750 rpms. The exhaust is still a little uneven. We will put a timing gun on it before we are completely finished it to complete the tuning process. https://vimeo.com/774463593/b2605101e8
HS2 Carb Adjustment
We found these instructions for HS2 tuning in the Haynes Repair Manual for the MG Midget/AH Sprite 1958-1980 to be very helpful:SU carb tuning-page-2