ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ค. 2024
- Carburettor-fed classic cars need not stumble and feel flat. With the help of AC Dodd, we're learning how an SU carburettor is properly tuned, complete with support from a recurved distributor and the correct ignition components.
AC Dodd's channel: @ACDodd
Patreon: / twincam
Would you like your car to be in a video?
If so, contact me via the links below!
Email: twincamcars@gmail.com
Instagram: / twincam_vids
Twitter: / ed_westby
TikTok: / twincam_vids
Facebook: / twincamvids
00:00 Introduction
03:15 Which Camshaft Do We Have?
15:07 Ignition Coil
17:40 Spark Plugs
22:13 Distributor Advance and Ignition Timing
34:47 Fuelling Needle and Piston Damper
38:58 Driving Impressions - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
![[ไฮไลต์] ฟุตบอลชาย อุซเบกิสถาน vs สเปน รอบแบ่งกลุ่ม | โอลิมปิก 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2ps5WKV1Mq0/mqdefault.jpg)
Fantastic to see a proper engineer at work. No computer required. Real intelligence and wisdom beats AI!
When you have a man who is an expert in a given subject, no matter what that is, you have an interesting man to watch
Ed, that's way way WAY more than tuning an SU carb, that's an old-school remap performed but a man who should really be wearing a dark cloak and a pointy hat than some freshly pressed clean overalls.
This guy know his stuff. Refreshing to watch the old " art " tuning😊
At last! The Holy Grail of A series tuners breathes a level of life unheard of into yet another woefully under performing engine. Can you imagine had BL set these up correctly from the factory ?!
It would have been very expensive and the manufacturers lost money on every mini they made...
@@philiptownsend4026that was the tale of tbe first minis. I wasn’t by the time these were in production.
The mini and then tbe metro saved the company by that time.
Setting up with a better coil with better curve would have only been a spring by tbe looks of things. We live and learn I guess
I would pay good money just to sit next to this guy and watch him work! Fantastic.
His YT channel shouldn't be free, there's SO much I've learned just by watching his clips that I feel like I owe him hundreds of pounds in subscription fees.
Wow that's a bloke that knows what he's talking about, as others have said great to see a true craftsman at work.
Always great to see experts at work and passing on their knowledge to the younger generation. And Melody is all the better for it.
Fantastic stuff. This is what TH-cam should be about! I can remember my life between 17 and 21 was spent trying to workout how my Mini's dizzy and SU worked. In the 80s. It seemed every other early 20s lad was doing the sane thing with their Mini, Moggie or 1100
"It starts, it works". An attitude by so many and it's infuriating! These things can be so much better when tuned.
"It works, why do you want to pay this AC Dodd guy to look at it?" My wife asked. Because he's an absolute genius. What he doesn't know about the A Series and SU Carbs just isn't worth knowing.
I absolutely love watching someone like AC Dodd and his incredible knowledge and skill. Well done sir.
A joy to watch this. Somebody that actually understands what he is doing. Great video thanks!!
Wow! Mr Dodd, What an amazing vault of knowledge. That was less of a tuning than A laying on of Hands. He is what We would gall "A Carb Whisperer" ; - )
Ed I know I may often appear gushingly OTT, but it is always sincere. And this is no exception. What a tuner and what a vast change - Melody is now a racer! There was no problem of watching as it was like watching a true and sensitive expert at work. More I say! As ever, thank you for maintaining the series - I would be lost without it and your bubbling enthusiasm. Rob
Always a pleasure to watch a true craftsman at work.
What an absolute joy to see a master of his craft at work, the results are stunning.
Hi Ed, this is one of the best videos I have had the pleasure of watching for a long time.
Proper, old-school engineering by a real expert.
Melody sounds so good now and clearly drives far beyond how she ever has before.
It was very interesting to see some of the mods and hear about the reasons why they were carried out.
You have found a Master in Mr Dodd.
Great work, both of you!
That engine sounds a heck of a lot more responsive now! Having seen the changes to the advance springs, carb damper rates and so on, I can appreciate exactly why the original carb and timing was just so mediocre. So frustrating to see how much potential that engine had, and yet so few people would have been able to experience it. Worth every penny of an expert's time.
I stuck around because it is a treat to see a master a work!
I've not heard an A-series so happy, so on-song for many, many years. They always were one of those engines that really rewarded you for getting them properly tuned.
Oh how I’d pay good money to have this man work wonders on my Metro. Fabulous video and AC Dott has gained a new subscriber
I love this, proper skill back to a time when you could mess with engines and cars were cars
What a wizard at work
Great video. AC Dodds knows his stuff.
It was interesting to see whilst he was doing the tune up how poor the original factory parts were for the best engine setup and the scope for improvement.
Very interesting video. There's a guy that knows Exactly what he's doing and how changes in one area need to be consolidated in other areas.
Maaaan, I wish I still had my minis. Miss playing about with SU carbs and watching this man work was a joy.
AC Dodd tuned my MK1 Mini 848cc engine and just like your experience it drives so much better now.
This was fantastic to see. Back in the 80s and 90s we, as in me and my friends, had no real way of measuring the mixture throughout the whole range. I remember a friend spending a huge amount of time and a fair few needles driving his car at particular loads, stopping and looking at the plugs on the side of the road to see if if was too rich or too lean.
Your expert is so knowledgeable and Meledy is so much better for his 'twiddling'
My Father was a Senior Toolroom Foreman working for Pressed Steel Fisher at Castle Bromwich. SU were virtually next door to the site so he used to take our cars there to be tuned. Most of the technicians did that by ear and they did a great job. It didn't cost very much either!
I must admit when I saw the video title and length I anticipated doing a lot of skipping forward. I watched every second! It was compelling viewing watching a craftsman with such an encyclopedic knowledge working and performing his magic.
The car sounded fantastic at the end, the sweetest A series I've come across for sure. No wonder you're so happy.
Bloody brilliant and informative video. What a transformation. Guys a genius. Thanks Ed 👍
You so much remind me of myself 40 years ago when I had a 1982 Metro 13 S
I stuck around to the end because it was interesting and I could see the positive result of each and every step Mr Dodd did with the wee beasty. I also wanted to hear the result of the mods to the damper and how they translated to gear changes and drivability - talk about sound like a much more modern car!
The way an A / A+ revs usually take a studied drop between the gears - as opposed to drop down ready for the next acceleration punch - I always put down to the heavy flywheel....but that does not seem to be the case at all. That little engine just wants to go - and 998 camshaft be damned! Anything Rover thought they were saving / de-tuning by using it is a non-issue when the engine runs as well as it does because it is finally allowed to.
She's got a lease on life like a little pocket-rocket from the European or Japanese manufacturers of the era....but she's a classy little Rover hatch running - as you said - an engine that is little changed from its introduction 70+ years ago. I can't believe the change in her attitude, Ed....but I have to because it's unmistakable!
The final accolade is that she will be as economical as your right foot allows her to be....but I'll bet that even pedaling her a bit from time to time won't make that much of a difference and she will be at least as economical as she was because she can turn fuel into momentum that much easier without the need for large (or additional) carburettors, a huge lumpy camshaft or a mound of currency spent balancing and blueprinting the engine and filling it with all manner of expensive bits.
What a win! Mr Dodd truly deserves the title of Oracle when it comes to understanding the A-series, for sure. All the best
One of your best videos, thoroughly enjoyed it 👍👍
Nice to listen to specialists
My first car was a Rover Metro. 1.3L automatic. Great little car.
A very enjoyable and educational video that Ed 👍
This video is inspiring. Thoroughly enjoyed watching.
When I had the metro….. he’s the sort of guy I’d call too….. sounds miles better…… I do watch him on his own channel 😎👌🏽
Great vid!! I wish Mr Dodd could visit Aus. Will invest in a remote tune at some stage. Keep up the vids
Well done AC. Not quite his thing but it would be interesting to see just how much his tunes unleash with before & after dyno runs- especially the torque differences across the range.
Of course in lightweight cars with relatively mild power outputs a proper setup unlocking only a handful of horses at peak is very noticeable with the butt-dyno but only tells part of the story. The area under the torque curve is what really makes a tangible difference on the road & thats where the modified torque curve & proper fuelling makes an enormous difference!
This was awesome to watch. Every minute of it. It was great to listen to and learn from an expert and to listen to this fine running engine. I have a different car but similarly old and similarly pure mechanical breed with a Stromberg carburettor and I just imagined what it could be if someone who knows what he is doing fixed it.
Brilliant- I remember trying to find that perfect tune on my Wolseley 1300 (1275 with twin HS2 SUs, contact breaker ignition) all those years ago!
You will probably find much better fuel economy too!
Fantastic vid sharing lifetimes of experience, THX awfully.
What astonishing knowledge. I wish he lived in Melbourne so he could tune my P5B
I do remote tuning via video link.
A great video for us A series nuts. Just goes to show what can be achieved with the right knowledge. Excellent stuff Ed.
Did you do a compression test as well? The guy is so right about the advance curve on older cars with distributors. On a modern car, it's kind of irrelevant because it is controlled by the engine management which tends to either work fine or not at all, but with dizzies it really is a must check. Back in the early 1980s I was building engines for a manufacturer's works rally team. In those days, most were still running carbs and dizzies and we had an incident where the mechanics checked the ignition timing after testing, only to find that it was around 20 degrees retarded relative to the correct figure (with a competition engine running a dizzy you normally check the full advance figure rather than idle because the engine will quickly fail under competition conditions if this is wrong). So they corrected it - and - the car lasted less than half a mile in the actual event proper. What had happened was that something had jammed in the dizzy stopping the centrifugal advance working at all. They added twenty degrees to this and as soon as the event started, the dizzy had freed itself up and advanced twenty degrees beyond the correct figure, catastrophically detonating the engine and causing an immediate retirement. If they'd checked, they'd have noticed that there was no increasing advance with increasing revs and could have changed the dizzy.
This video takes me back 40 to 45 years ago when I was racing in the 850 Minicross formula. The technical regulations were seemingly quite restrictive but their phrasing was loose in that "If something is precisely described or illegal then you must follow that while if not described or referenced then total freedom is allowed" whereas these days the emphasis is the other way round "you can do what the technical regulations say you can do but anything else is illegal/banned". I hope my paraphrasing is clear.
I am only writing about the engine here, and only in some aspects relative to yours/Mr Dodds video.
My engine builder back then was the now well known Dave Mountain. He encouraged creative ideas from his customers and to try them out on his rolling road.
On a racer, engine-wise, the only two things that matter are reliability and maximum power BHP at the top of the rev range. My engine was always throttle max open and running between 5000 and 7000 RPM, no interest whatsoever in any other engine situation. This made things very easy as all the engine needed to do was pump maximum air, gas flow was everything.
Dave did all the usual engine internal race engine build things while I worked on ancilliary items...
1. Camshafts were specified to be standard with no regrinding and part numbers were quoted in the reg's. However there were very wide factory tolerances in cam lifts so I obtained several by extracting them from dead Minis in scrapyards, then I measured on Vee blocks with a dial gauge and chose the best one. But we could go further...
2. Tech regs specified standard rockers must be used but did not specifically ban modifying them, therefore I could modify them. I experimented with old style pressed steel rockers rather than the later cast(?) items. This was because I would cut the rockers with a hacksaw between the rocker shaft and the pushrod just sufficiently to enable ME to bend them but not so much that the CAMS could bend them with light valve springs. I would then laboriously work along all eight valves and bend the rockers as much as necessary and dummy building and measuring to achieve as close to 290thou" valve lift as I could get on each valve, as the Tech Regs specified - individually optimised max permissible valve lift. Then I would weld the rockers where cut and rebuild the top end with Cooper S outer only valve springs.
3. Tech Regs specified standard distributor and part numbers. They didn't say I couldn't modify it though. Reasoning that fixed spark timing was all that was necessary and with Dave M advising that the advance mechanisms were always wrong and moving about randomly I drilled a small hole through the top and bottom advance mechanism plates and locked them together with a self tapping screw. Very simple. It enabled Dave M to swing the distributor while engine was running flat out on the dyno to achieve max BHP on the dyno's readout. Simple fast totally accurate spark timing for the one flat out driving condition we needed.
4. Tech Regs specified inlet and exhaust manifolds and systems were free but one 1.5" SU carburettor must be used and NO water injection allowed. Also that carb size would be measured by scrutineers using a 1.5" wooden gauge of very slightly over 1.5" size, how much over was not specified, so if the scrutineers wooden plug fitted into the carb then the carb had clearly been opened out... But the Tech Regs writers forgot to disallow other modifications to the carburettor. A square has more area than a circle, so the whole bore of the carburettor can be opened out to a 1.5" squircle and the inlet manifold likewise to smooth the join. If four small areas of the original round bore remain then the carburettor will still be 1.5" and the scrutineers measuring template will report so.
Additionally the bridge under the piston can have it's sharp edges removed to reduce turbulence. Then the throttle butterfly can be knife edged where it faces airflow, the throttle spindle can have it's fixing screws removed to reduce turbulence, the throttle spindle can be filed flat to reduce it's thickness to reduce obstruction of airflow, these items are then reassembled and the brass butterfly and spindle can be soldered together and the joint smoothed. One last item is to file a large radius on the bottom of the piston where it faces incoming air, again to remove sharp edges presented to the airflow. We used very thin oil in the piston damper so it would rise and fall faster but actually the piston could have been locked in the up position as no mixture adjustment while running was necessary.
5. We found that crankcase pressure reduces power and tends to push crankcase atmosphere along with oil up past the piston rings into the combustion chambers. To pull a vacum in the crankcase would reduce windage and reduce pollution of the combustible mixture in the combustion chambers. This could be done actively with a pump but we ran a heat resistant pipe from a block breather to a small tube with it's open end facing downwind inserted into the exhaust pipe, the speed of the exhaust gasses pulled the small vacuum we needed.
6. Water injection was forbidden but a cold damp atmosphere could be provided by a water vapour spray from a nozzle positioned near to the carburettor inlet, driven by a small windscreen washer pump. This tended to do the same job as water injection - cooling inlet air and so increasing it's density.
All these small things add up and give power advantages over others who don't think or bother... There were many other mods to engine, transmission, suspension, body shell and and brakes to produce a faster car within the loosely written Tech Regs but they are not relevent to your video.
Great video, Ed, every moment of it. Truly illuminating. Well done on the vid and on sorting Melody out to her max. Would love to get FRUty into the magic mitts of Mr Dodd. 😄👍
will be interested to see after a run the colour of the spark plugs after the tuning work
When metros were in vogue every time we did a crypton tune we always set the ignition timeing we set it according to the distributor number as it never matched the engine no or model no, also on some versions useing an old carb body with the vac advance in the proper place as to meet the co restrictions at the time it was drawn directly from the manifold as he wasn’t checked it was a case of what hydrocarbons . And to make you feel better with certain models they had a (15foot gap) and would run like a bag of sh1t with a 25” gap.
The carburettor expert was fantastic, we all should know where to contact him when we need the SU's tuned on any car. Great too see him at work. Thanks for an interesting video. All the best Bob
Wow Ed, the best 45 mins I've watched on TH-cam. This explains a lot about how my metros ran over the years!! What a guy, such knowledge being passed on here, great video 👍🇬🇧
Fantastic- thank you. So interesting and informative. Going to dip back into my copy of Haynes How to Tune A series engines…. and dream of fun projects. 🙏
I did watch to the end and it was well worth it
Excellent informative video 👌
Excellent video! Very interesting
A really interesting video, had a Maestro and several Minis but they never ran this well.
Good video
Very interesting
A few years back I had a XKE with three SU, one of the first items i got was a Uni Sync Carburetor Balance Tool. Ed, another great watch, thanks for your time, work and posting.
Really cool that
Great stuff! We are very lucky to have someone like Adrian.. very knowledgable chap. Cant wait to get my 998 mini tuned in July up at mini medics 😊
Great video.
Love the metro, great design. But Ford wacked a twin weber on their 1.3 Fiesta and it felt like a rocket ship compared to the Metro. Despite being an equally outdated engine.
Dyno run needed 💪
Did Adrian explain how to use the engine number to determine the cam? I would like to know for the engine fitted to my car. Thanks 😊
Glad you're NOT filming everything and remembering to just enjoy the car and enjoy working on it. That's an interesting trick filing the damper so the piston falls faster.
knowledge🤓
Thank you for the video, was a good watch :)
I've got a 948CC A series in my Sprite which I've tried tuning and it's less bad but not exactly good.
I've wound the mixture to be as lean as it will go but I think it's still rich - what tool was used to measure the air/fuel ratio in the exhaust?
Assuming it's got fuel in the float chambers (you have to prime it if it's been sat a week unless you want to spend a long time cranking) it starts well, normally with minimal choke.
When mine is cold, if you floor it, it falls on its face and nearly dies. I think that's correct. It idles fine.
When it's warm, it performs fairly well. Idles fine, revs fine, no real dead spots but it's noisy with your foot to the floor and doesn't really do a lot. It will do 70 on the motorway.
When it's hot (as in I've been driving an hour) the idle drops so low it often stalls when you're in traffic.
Buy your self a dash mounted wideband gauge, and install into the vehicle. That’s how you can then monitor your own fueling.
@@ACDodd Still got to drill and weld a thread into the exhaust?
@@jimmyk9523 yes
I never knew that about A series timing. I presume this is set up for 96 Octane fuel? What Octane did you Metro require?
Very interesting but I like to keep it stock if possible.
😊
Rev match?
Damage to engines is the square of the revs and damage to suspension is also square of the top speed.At 30 its 900 at 60 its3600.😊
Truly fascinating.
Does he do the KIF carbs on the K series Metro's too?
There's very little info available for them, so I just used the method of looking at plug colours and adjusting the mixture until it's now running rather well.
I'm still unsure of how to set up the idle bypass, so I just left that alone.
Why don't you ask !
Did you get the £3000 tuning bill?
Why did the factory just tune for economy when the A Series had so much potential?
A great watch, he has skills they are dying Ive had metros VPs all automatics and I could tune them so they ran beautifully
I don’t understand the old v new coil.
Was the weaker/old coil 0.8ohms
And the new coil is 3ohms
Or vice versa?
I’m swapping my coil now. And I thought 3ohms was more power.
Have I also got this wrong. Help! Lol
Thanks
Ohms is a measure of resistance, so the lower the figure, the higher the power. The old one was 3 ohms, so the new more powerful one is the 0.8.
@@TwinCam great thank you!
Iv just managed to cancel my 3.0ohm coil.
I’ll order a 0.8ohm
It says not for ‘points’ did yours have points or electronic?
I can update later if need be.
Thanks for the reply.
This is very helpful for us diy’ers
The lower the resistance the more power.
My car is electronic ignition. All Austin Metro 1.3s from 1987 onwards had electronic ignition. However, 1.0s had points all the way through production I believe.
@@ACDodd I ordered through simonbbc.Com
I mentioned this video and your work ac dodd. They knew you straight away👍🏻
So I ordered the 0.8ohms
Are you handy with Webber 32/36 carbs. And a bmw m10b20 at all?
Or strictly Aseries only
Cheers
All that tuning, and without listening to a hose pipe. I'm shocked. 😂
He would if it had twin carbs , or a balance meter.
IMHO the A Series was always a 'good' engine. Which is probably why it lasted so long.
So you have got a carb to get nearer to efi?
This is like getting a typewriter to pretend it's a word processor.
Carburettors are an insult to the intelligence of anyone who's bothered to learn the problem.
They are simple and can be optimised, but why bother?
Because sometimes carburettors must be used. Optimising what he has got leaves the engine standard and so does not introduce insurance implications. Apart from that it is an interesting technical exercise, just for the hell of it.
@@philiptownsend4026 true.
I so wish I could have seen this years ago. Great video. Thanks Ed.🦾