What are the options for reconditioning or buying the reserve solenoid unit?

Daniel

Reserve Solenoid
 

In my case the original cleaned up, but it looked very delicate hair thin wiring inside the solenoid, so frightened me. As an option to fixing it properly I'd think you could take the power wire for when the solenoid is engaged and connect it to a modern electric fuel pump, but when you look at the parts that would seem a very messy solution. Frankly, I think it best to pay the £200 suggestion for a proper repair or modify the pipework to eliminate the damaged solenoid and to ensure that fuel is drawn always from the lower 'reserve' level instead of the standard higher level. After all, few if any modern cars have a reserve fuel system.

If you want to keep the reserve, then perhaps look to a manual tap system such as used on all older motorcycles, and indeed on the Goggomobil I once owned!

The manual tap is a good idea.

I have now had a go at reviving my original solenoid and it actually went quite well. After the protective cap came of by a bit of pulling, the screw cover came off with the application of heat to the cast body. Then some careful cleaning up made it all work again. We didn't go near the coil wiring which was still intact.

Daniel

Daniel

Petrol float
 

When poking about in there, I imagine you may have taken a look at the petrol float? My car seems very original indeed, but I wonder about the float ... a tin can with the lid soldered on, a few scraps of brown paper on the outside, and embossed in the cap were most of the letters to read OVALTINE. The middle letters were obscured by solder!

I imagine this is not the preferred Bristol float, but its the perfect size (about 2.5" long and about 1.25" diameter) so I rather wonder if the parts bin was empty at some stage but a tin was to hand! It was leaking a little so I resoldered the joins and added part of a champagne cork for good measure.

Michael

fuel starvation
 

Its well worth blowing out the fuel line as well; the tanks do shed crud over the decades and old petrol gives off solid deposits. Could explain years of misfires ive had til thinking of this.

crud
 

Yuh, I removed my tank & washed it out with 5 litres of acetone, which was harder than it sounds. My reserach suggests that alloy tanks need no liner (steel do) but someone had put vast amounts of sealer in there, most of which had settled in the reserve area of course. I got flakes & chunks out but some remained even after 2 weeks of this cleaning.

I blew out the lines by mouth & tyre compressor, probably not very well. Rebuilt the fuel pump, cleaned the gauze filters in the pump & to each carb but did not strip the carbs. New coil, condensor, contacts, leads, plugs & plug caps.

It fires up better, and runs sort of OK to about 60mph but gets pretty fluttery then, misfires a bit, smokes too much & the plugs oil so I have improved things but not fixed, dammit. The oil makes me feel my next task is a compression test to see if I can work out, is it rings or is it valves? Great.