1972 E Type Series 3
Baltimore, MD USA

This car had sat for a long time (almost 20 years) in a CA garage before I moved it out to MD. I sent it to Lippincott's and Terry got it back to running, but I didn't do all of the work that was probably needed due to lack of funds. I did the minimum (and that was still a lot!). The car ran great coming back from PA to MD and had a few minor incidents since then that were fixed by Mark Raspi at Raspi's British Imports in Edgewood, MD.

About two years ago, I was letting the car idle in the driveway to charge up the battery. When I put the car back in the garage, I notice a puddle of fuel on the ground. I figured the fuel line let go and I didn't have any funds at the time to repair it, so I let it sit in the garage.

With the weather warming up, I got ambitious today to get it back out and running again. With a battery bump and a little bit of fresh fuel, I attempted to start her up.

First thing I noticed was that the choke lever is VERY stiff and will not pull out past the first position. It used to slide with ease and with only a pull from one finger.

Still, she turned over and after a few tries and some accelerator pumps, she started. Tons of smoke, as you can imagine from sitting for a while, but sounded ok. After about 15 seconds, the engine started to bog down and sounded like it was misfiring. Fuel started to spill (with force) from the right side air box. No fuel was observed on the driver's side set of carbs.

After removing the cover of the box and the air filter, I started it up again and could see that fuel was coming out of the top holes on the side of both carbs (bear with me...I know VERY LITTLE about cars and how they work). The fuel was coming out of the bottom of the air filter box, so I shut the car down and took the cover off of the box. Everything was wet with fuel, but I could see that fuel was coming from both carbs.

I also noticed that if I put the ignition to the second position, I believe that starts the fuel pump. Fuel would come out of the holes in the carb again, but this time, only the carb closer to the firewall and at a much slower rate.

Here is a photo of the carb closest to the firewall on the passenger side of the car. Finger indicates the hole that fuel was coming out of. It also came out of the hold located adjacent on the other side.



These carbs were rebuilt by Lippincott. Any idea what might be causing this and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance!

Rich Palarea

 

I cant view the picture here. But I saw this on an 60 MKII I had. It was a stuck float in the carb

 

I was going to say the same about the float valve -- it works just the same as your toilet. The float rises due to petrol in the float chamber shutting off the valve above. Bad leaks like you have was common when a car wasn't run for a long time. Plenty of tickling with the finger of the float valve, plus blowing hard through the fuel input should rectify matters. If the carbs. are SU., they hardly ever go wrong otherwise.
Leedsman.
p.s. Make sure the dashpots are filled with oil, engine oil will do. The screw covers have a little dipstick in them. No oil there means all sorts of flat-spots, due to no acceleration enrichment.

 

Thanks for the advice. They are Stromberg carbs, so no telling what will happen next. But all four were completely rebuilt a few years back by a professional. I believe this issue is just from the car sitting for so long.

 

Strombergs are very similar to SUs. They are both air-slide types. Look out for split rubber diaphragms on Strombergs.
Leedsman.