OT: 1970 Ford Escort carb

[mpbarrett]

Ok this has nothing to do with Triumphs...
Anyone have any experience with 1970 Ford escort 1100 cc carburettor?
I haven't sold out and brought an Escort but we have a boat that has a ford engine, basically a marinised 1970 1100cc crossflow engine.
The problem is its difficult to start, runs rough and coughs and stall when you open the throttle.
Done all the usual things, plugs valve clearance, new fuel etc and am left with the carb. I have stripped it down and cleaned it but I have no idea how it works (oh for an SU..) with jets and drillings all over the body! It has a fuel injections system that squirts fuel in to the inlet when you open the throttle I have a feeling this is putting so much fuel into the engine that it goes very rich but am not really sure.

Any suggestions welcome, guess I should look for ford Escort support forum!
BTW the boat is a 1970 Freeman 23 Mk2.
cheers
mike

[sx2visuvesi]

Do you have the carb make and model?

You mention Fuel injection as well, so I'm a little confused

[thescrapman]

Mike

I think Mike Banks is your man, I am sure he has exactly the same in his boat..

Cheers

Colin

[bodders1]

Quoted from sx2visuvesi

You mention Fuel injection as well, so I'm a little confused

I suspect that he is referring to an accellerator pump that richens the mixture as you press the throttle pedal, before the airflow has risen sufficiently to pull more fuel thorugh the main jet.  It is intended to conteract the tendency of the mixture to go lean if the throttle is opened quickly.

It works by squirting a measured amount of fuel straight into the airflow, usually on the downstream side of the throttle butterfly.  These sort of pumps are fitted on Weber and Dellorto carbs, among others.

There are two possibilities here:  1) that the pump is broken, so you are getting a very lean mixture on sudden accelleration, or 2) that someone has fiddled wit the callibration of the pump so you are getting too rich a mixture on sudden accelleration.

You would need to get the original spec of your carb/engine combination and then recalibrate the pump to deliver the right amount of fuel when the throttle is pressed all the way down.  There's a section on this in Des Hammill's book:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Power-Tune-Weber-Dellorto-Carburettors-Speedpro/dp/1903706750

[sparky_spit]

Quoted from thescrapman

Mike

I think Mike Banks is your man, I am sure he has exactly the same in his boat..

Cheers

Colin

Yes and no....

Our Elysian 27 has a marinised Ford 1500, so very similar setup to yours Mike, with a single downdraft Solex carb.  I have to say that every fuel problem we had turned out to be electrical, and was mostly caused by poor quality ignition parts. When we had similar symptoms to those you have, it was a faulty rotor arm that was the problem. Changing it for a known good one cured it, and changing back to the faulty one (just for a sanity check) gave the fault again, so that was definitely the fault. And this was a proper new Lucas one, but unfortunately a Lucas one manufactured with carbon infected plastic apparently.  A new red one from Distributor Doctor cured the problem permanently.  I also changed the cap as well for a NOS lucas one from the same source.  I assume your dizzy is a D25?

If your problem really is carburation, then I can't really help, but what Paul says above looks good advice to me.  I only ever took ours apart once and renewed the float chamber needle valve, checked the fuel level, etc., and fitted new gaskets as preventative maintenance.

Good luck with fixing it; I'm sure you'll get there eventually.

The "no" part of the first line refers to the fact we have now sold the boat, last Friday, after 18 years of owning it and using it on The Broads, and it's going back to the Ouse at Ely where it was built.

[sparky_spit]

One other thought...   You say you have got new fuel but have you checked that there is not any water in the bottom of the tank or in the filter?  I assume you have a tank drain and a CAV type bulkhead filter/water-trap or similar.  On The Broads the BSS scheme no longer allows any glass bowls on mechanical pumps or filter/water traps, so you can no longer visually check for water in the fuel; not sure if this is the case elsewhere. Apologies if you have already checked all this.

[mpbarrett]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I did mean the accelerator pump!
I will refit the carb tomorrow and do some checking of the electrics, I did notice that the coils felt hot or at least warmer than I expected so will try substituting that and change the rotor arm for a spare one. I don't think its a Lucas one.
We have had the boat for about 10 years and up to now she has always behaved her self.
Yes the BSS does not allow glass bowls so it has an all metal one. Will open the filter and have a look.
Might see your boat around as we are a few miles down the river from Ely in the way to Cambridge.

cheers
mike

[sparky_spit]

The coil on ours ran very hot, too hot to touch after an hour.  I changed it a couple of times, and even once ran it with a ballast resistor in circuit to reduce its current flow, but it still ran very hot and never gave any trouble running like that.  I came to the conclusion that the enclosed engine space gave very little airflow and it would always run hot.