Back On The Rolling Road

Having worked through a long list of repairs and maintenance, Simon’s Herald goes back on the rolling road and gets the green light for its European adventure

Last issue I reported on my visit to a rolling road to get a power run on the Herald because I wanted to get before and after figures when changing the exhaust back box. Unfortunately things didn’t go quite to plan as Mike the operator was not happy revving the engine anywhere near its limit, saying it sounded rough from the bottom end and that oil pressure was dropping away to virtually nothing at idle.

With the gruelling Ten Countries Run coming up, I wanted to get these issues checked out and so booked the car in with Dale Barker at Moordale Motors in Potters Bar. As explained in the August/September issue, Dale sorted out some issues with the distributor, adjusted the timing and the valve clearances, raised the idle speed and had a go at tweaking the carburettors. All of this made a huge improvement to the smoothness, the oil pressure at idle and the quietness of the engine, but the carburettors would still not provide the right mix at both idle and under load.

So I bought a complete rebuild kit for the carburettors, and booked that in at Hall’s Garage (a classic car specialist just down the road from me) to have it fitted. This kit came with plain butterflies rather than ones with poppet valves, and just as Dale promised, fitting them got rid of the previous delay in the engine returning to idle when you lifted off the throttle.

That left one further rather major problem that Dale had discovered and which needed dealing with right away – excessive play in the rear wheel bearings. So we gathered together all the bits we thought we would need – driveshafts, UJs, wheel bearings and dampers. I decided to also get some new wheel cylinders while the rear brakes were apart, and to replace a couple of brake pipes that were starting to look a little scabby.