Alrighty! Back for an update
The airsoft beads work like a charm in the tires. No vibrations unless you hit a big bump in the road, or a cat-eye, and then it just takes a few moments for everything to settle down again. The first couple of times it was a bit odd, but you get used to it. I've actually never had a car balance that smoothly before, it's kinda nice. Occasionally on a hard launch the beads appear to "bunch up" and cause vibrations, but a lift off the throttle and back on seems to sort everything out.
The new engine was leaking badly, so I popped it out of the car and discovered both the cam plug and flywheel seal to be leaking. The resulting oil ruined my clutch disc, but I happened to have a new one sitting on the shelf to put in. It was actually a bigger pain the butt then I anticipated. I pulled the motor on a wednesday evening, as we were leaving on a big long trip Friday morning. Motor came out by midnight, flywheel seal was diagnosed and replaced and I went to bed knowing I had tonnes of time to pop the motor in and spend some time tuning before packing Thursday evening. Motor was back in by lunch, and that's when I discovered my new flywheel seal was either a) bad or b) installed incorrectly. Regardless, it didn't start leaking until the motor was running...which meant I had put
everything back together. Sigh. Popped the motor out once more, frantically called around to find a seal and had one delivered for 8pm. Motor was back in by about 10:30, but tuning had to wait until the morning. Woke up at 7:30 for some quick tuning, and then took the car on a 1,000km roadtrip.
As you can see from the photo, we were a little bit loaded down! Four bikes, full riding gear, spare parts and tools for both car and bikes. Needless to say we spent most of the trip visiting service stations for fuel!
I knew the 205's were going to be a touch wide for the car... In regular daily use it will rub slightly on big bumps or hard corners...just enough to tell you that the space is toight, but before our trip hadn't even marked the tire. My front left fender is an aftermarket replacement, and about 5mm narrower then the passenger side, with which I have no issues. Fully loaded, you can see the rubbing became a wee bit more of an issue! Part way through the mountain twisties we damaged the fender enough that it was rubbing further...so I pulled out the tools and tweaked the fender to clear. It's definitely going to need a replacement, which is turning out to be harder to find then I expected.
The problem, however, seems to be deeper then just the fender. Camber adjustment on the left side maxes out at -1deg, while the right will go to -3. I have a complete (rim to rim) NOS factory front suspension assembly for my '75, I just need to go about taking some measurements to figure out where the incorrect or damaged parts lie.
Other then that, I've been working on the tuning of the new engine. I swear I have a million photos of spark plugs, taken after an uphill loaded run to determine how each change is effecting things. The plugs have shown a rich running condition from the get-go, and you could see it at idle sooting up the tailpipes. It seemed that my rich running issue was caused by three things: incorrect jetting, too much fuel pressure and the accelerator circuits being miss adjusted.
The fuel pump was putting out 8psi instead of the required 2psi, so I spent an evening with the car parked beside the lathe, slowly shortening the fuel pump rod until I had the correct pressure. I worked on the accelerator circuits tonight, which combined with my new idle jets from a couple of nights ago seems to be ticket. I'll do a bit more testing on the idle side of things, and then move over to the mains.
Biggest thing for the moment is making sure I didn't lean out the accelerator circuit too much...but the car and I made it to whistler today without blowing up...so here's hoping :P
Seriously considering a wide-band to make this easier & faster.
-Dave