Hello folks, I had a spare afternoon last week and having gotten my new inlet manifold back from my welding/fabrication buddies, it was time to put it on. They added some more aluminium to the area where the top of the inlet runner meets the gasket flange, this is where I went through when gasket matching the ports to the inlet, it was so thin there that even in the other three cylinders where there was no holes, it blew through when welding.
I was struggling to find new studs with the correct threaded and non-threaded areas so I transferred the carb studs over from the old manifold along with the rubber bush/bolt that secures the oil filler. The studs did have hex holes on the tops, but these were corroded so no chance of being able to unscrew them this way! I used the double nut method.
I hadn't noticed how minging the coolant was either! It was changed in 2015 by Rich on here as part of that batch of work, it started off being red/pink! You can see from the coolant passages from the old inlet manifold how manky those dribbles are! SO as part of this I drained the coolant and put in some cheap halfords blue silicate ethylene glycol stuff. When the head comes off (hopefully over winter) I'll give it all a proper flush and might even go Evans waterless...
New manifold in, I re-used the newish gasket that was put on a few weeks ago - I'd ordered a decent elring gasket for this and a few sheets of DIY gasket paper for the carb for this very job today, but it took ages to arrive - bank holidays! Curiously the only carb-to-manifold gaskets I could find were part of a complete rebuild kit, at around £60! Stuff that, a few pounds for a few sheets of gasket paper - much better. Again, when the head comes off I'll make some new carb gaskets.
There are some new fuel pipes here too, just the pipes between the pump, carb and fuel economy device (this is used by the fuel computer in the GT models

) as they were beginning to perish, the pipes that run from the hard lines to the pump will also likely need doing but that is for another day.
Whilst I had the manifold and carb out of the way, I fitted some ducting for the new loom I made a few weeks ago. I was worried about the naked wires and knew the mani would be off again, so some split trunking later...
All back together again, the sharp eyed amongst you might notice that I moved the (new) fuel filter to a much more accessible location, it was quite close to the fuel pump before and tricky to get at with all the pipes in the way.
I've not noticed any real difference with the new manifold, but then the fuelling hasn't been adjusted yet - the car is booked into a local-ish place that has a guy who specialises in tuning carburettor engines, they have a rolling road etc aswell so they can check the air/fuel ratio and jetting etc to correct any potential lean running, I imagine it is running at least a little lean with an exhaust that is more free flowing and perhaps a little more air coming in through the intake than before. It certainly will be interesting to see the power/torque figures!
Current complaints:
-Alternator bearings are whining when they warm up
-Charging light is on dimly, but when I bled the coolant after this batch of work I did get coolant all over the battery/gearbox earth points, so I'll clean these up on Tuesday when I'm next off and hope that is the issue.
-Rattly valvetrain! It's ok at idle but quite rattly at 1500 rpm or so, only really noticeable when the choke is pulled at on fast idle.