07-07-2022, 03:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-11-2022, 11:37 PM by Terry Bentley.)
Chapter 111
Another day done finished and behind me now. After school, Steve hung around instead of heading home like he would normally do during the school week. Hey man, how are things going on the kart stuff? I was hoping we might get that practice in sometime before the next stone age or ice age.
Well that depends if the Russians bomb us with the nukes. We could get bombed back to the stone age. Or if enough of the nuclear bombs go off and change the weather, then that could start the next ice age. So Steve which would you prefer?
After Steve mentioned this I thought he was referring to the Twilight Zone episode that just aired. "The Shelter". It was about friends celebrating a birthday party with a neighbor that was a doctor. Then getting interrupted by a warning of an impending nuclear attack.
While toasting drinks they commented about the good doctor wasting his time building a bomb shelter. Even complaining jokingly of course about all that noise during the evenings and inconvenience from concrete trucks blocking the street.
So the residents go scrambling around trying to prepare themselves. But then they all turn against the doctor and his family with the only bomb shelter. Naturally it ends up being a false alarm, but sure makes you think. I wonder how people might act if something like that really happened. Who could you trust?
Right now at school we practice emergency drills drills just in case of a nuclear attack from the Russians. I have doubts covering my head and back of the neck will keep me safe if a bomb goes off anywhere in the north Texas area. Once again call me skeptical. My dads parents still own the old house he grew up in . It is just across the street from moms parents. There is a storm shelter in the back yard. But seriously doubt it would be of any use as a bomb shelter. Right now i think it would be perfect as a club house.
Steve then interrupted my thoughts. How about quit being a smartace and get some engines running so we can make that practice day before either one of those things can happen.
Yea sounds like a good idea Steve. I plan to get serious this weekend and finish the engines. So far I got started on the spacers to convert over those stock manifolds and use the Go-Power 6 petal reed cages you picked up cheap a while back.
You might actually get to try them out? I was about to give up on those completely. I got a good deal on them when I bought the new rod. But since then thinking that six bucks they cost could have been better spent.
Heck no Steve, after I ran the engine with the Palmini manifold and big carburetor, it worked too good not to try them out. Just had to get some things done before I figured out how we could use them without spending any more money.
I decided to make these spacers and use the old stock manifolds. Since hogging them out and using bigger reeds helped so much, I thought we could open up the passage and use one of your Go-Power pyramid reeds this time. I dont know if it was the bored out carburetor or a combination of that and the Palmini manifold that made my engine run so well.
After running the big carburetor, I changed back to a completely stock manifold. You remember when my engine turned into a turd. It was the last thing I did on that one practice day. So I know the stock manifold is useless the way it is.
Your engine still had the manifold we opened up and put larger reeds on. But I never tried the modified carburetor on that one. So dont know for sure if it works anything like the Palmini manifold. I would like to swap some parts around the next time we are at the track just to find out exactly what works the best.
But modifying this stock intake manifold to use the pyramid reed should get us very close to how it ran with the Palmini manifold. Well at least I hope it does. I really need a practice day to do nothing but swap parts around without doing anything else.
I will have these finished, or nearly finished tomorrow before school. Then by the weekend, I will know for sure if they fit right. When we hit the track next time, then find out how well the engines run using these in place of the Palmini manifold. Steve then called it quits for the afternoon when he had to go home.
The next morning I got to school early as possible. Steve has band practice so I hitched a ride with him. His dad usually takes him to school early when there is practice. So today, I had plenty of time to spend on the spacers.
Mr Sadeskey was no where to be found. The shop was open with the lights on, but only the one side of shop where the lathe is. I didnt want to just walk in and help myself. Another ten minutes went by and still no teacher. Since he knew I was going to be here today, I decided to go ahead and start back on the spacers.
I figured out how to turn the lathe on, so that was the only hold up yesterday. But I later realized Mr Sadeskey had not intended on me using the lathe just yet. Not until he gave me the low down on operating it. Just having that little Craftsman lathe at home doesnt mean I have a clue how to operate this big monster sized Clausing Colchester lathe here at school.
I got my wits about me today. Then looked over my shoulder and checked out the pocked out places on the cinder block wall. Since there was no new chunks on the floor yesterday morning, my little accident could have been filling in an existing disaster.
It would be smart of me to wait and let Mr Sadeskey give me the whole spew on operating this lathe. I would like to know for sure about some things I already sort of figured out. But standing here I could be waiting until the bell rings. He did not return yesterday until after the first bell had already sounded off.
So this morning I need to use my smarts. Thats them things Frank always talks about. But have no idea what he means. His reference is usually about the book learning kind of smarts. I prefer the common sense type smarts when working with machinery.
I opened up the chuck and set the round part in, then made sure it was secure. A quick check to confirm it was running flat by cranking out the tail stock spindle face against my part. Then time to start drilling out that center hole. I found some drill bits in the tool crib, then made my first pass. After smaller ones I stepped up to a 3/4 inch drill bit. Next thing is set up a small boring bar to finish it out to size.
I wonder how a professional machinist would make these parts? Should I bore out the hole first then cut the taper. Or maybe go ahead and set it up then machine the taper out to size? Yesterday all of the ninth graders piled in here getting really nosy about what I was doing. But now thinking they are in Power mechanics, not machine shop. Maybe I am just too insecure about someone watching me working on a machine i dont really know how to operate. Its not like I have ever taken shop class before.
I estimated the taper by calculating the correct angle last night at home. Basic geometry to get that angle figured out. It was fairly straight forward in the Machinery Handbook. Even realizing how to use the trig tables calculating the angle was no big deal.
Just lots of numbers that made no sense without some useful purpose. The calculated numbers worked out to be just under 7 degrees. Like 6 degrees and 57 minutes. Since I dont trust myself doing mathematical calculations, time to confirm using common sense.
Rotating the top slide or compound, as it is also called, around was not that accurate, since I could only guess between whole degrees. But if I held the base of pyramid reed cage up against the face of chuck, then rotate top slide around until it lays flat against the side of cage....Well there it is. I checked the degrees of rotation on the scale. It shows right at 7 degrees. Close enough.
With a small boring bar in place of the usual turning or face cutting tool, I made a few passes in the existing 3/4 diameter hole. After a whole bunch more passes, then the taper was cut out close to size on the first spacer. This is easy enough to do. I can get used to this kind of work.
Using the shops vernier caliper, I checked the size of large end. It measured more than close enough. Then I can confirm this by dropping in the 6 petal pyramid reed assembly. If it still needs to open it up some more, then use a hand held grinder at home. For now I wanted to be able to bolt this to the manifold, then blend and make a good fit thru the intake passage. Clean it up with just enough clearance for the pyramid reed to fit snugly in place.
What the heck? The taper is not even close. I still have problems with the small screws that hold the reeds on too. They dont clear the opening at all. OK, I can tell the angle is way off. It needs to be more. So first i will try getting this right. Then figure out what to do about getting the screws to clear.
I kept increasing the angle all the way up to 12 degrees. This last cut I now see is too much. I backed off less than 1/2 degree and a few more passes seems close enough to more forward. To clear the screw heads, all I did was a straight bore deep enough for them to fit. Wow that wasnt so difficult. I got this covered.
My grandfather had given dad his old Dremel Moto grinder. It has all kinds of attachments that should work great to do the finish work on these spacers. Everything can get blended nice and smooth. Almost look like a fancy porting job when finished.
It was almost time for me to bail out of here before I saw Mr Sadeskey. I apologized for going ahead and starting with out confirming everything. But he reassured me it was fine. He had left the shop open for me to get working in case he was not back any time soon. There was some attendance sheets that he had to turn in to the office.
I thanked him again for the help and would bring the parts by so he could see what I was doing in a few days. I had more work that needed to be done at home before they were finished. I made it across the hall to Drafting class with plenty of time to spare today. It was boring to do even more 3-D drawings again. How many times drawing the same type of shapes before we move on to something else?
Well today we did elliptical instead of three dimensional round shapes. This was a lot more difficult than I first thought. We were not allowed to use any templates this time. At the odd angles we were drawing, would not have helped anyway. I had to calculate the arcs and radius before any stick pictures could be drawn. This took up half the time in class. I wonder if Algebra could help out in any way to calculate? Probably no such luck. But being able to use any Algebra would at least help me figure what to do with it.
Algebra class sucked as usual. I still have no clue what this stuff was good for. But for English, I got an assignment to write a short story. Hum....I wonder? No particular subject. Just different styles of writing. OK maybe I can pull this off.
Out of the different choices I have to pick from, there is one that might fly. I take a story, and write a condensed version, like in Readers Digest. How hard could it be to condense the notes I have been keeping on all of our karting escapades and turn it into a short story? I turned it in last year as a completed story. But since then added a lot to what happened since then.
So what if the teacher thinks it is boring to her. That wasnt the assignment to make it exciting. Just a condensed story. I can use the one I wrote last year in Language Arts. It needs some serious cleaning up. I had no clue about first, second or third person writing at the time.
But after proof reading my story about ten thousand times before turning it in, I better figured some of that stuff out. It is still difficult to make easy to understand sometimes. Especially if I am jumping from one character to the other. It seemed to me the story didnt flow so smoothly or as believable if I kept including "I said" or "he said" delivering a conversation between the characters.
Another choice is mocking up an advertisement like in a newspaper or magazine. I had to include some type of sales hype and presentation. Included would be a short but detailed description of the product for the ad. Hmm, I wonder, could something like a kart or part advert work for this? All of the aftermarket engine parts claiming massive power increases sure seems to get readers attention.
From all of the questions in Jim Butlers Karting Corner, there are a lot of people relying on the product testing and inquiring about those hotrod parts for nearly every engine running at the tracks.
Well that assignment is not due for a while, so it goes on the back burner for now. If something new doesnt slap me hard in the face, I will resort to rewriting last years story.
Back home Steve showed up again, which was unexpected. We usually ride the bus together, and he bails out headed straight for home. He usually has homework even when he doesnt have homework. His mom makes sure there is nothing he is lagging on in any of his classes. If he has finished todays work, then go ahead and start tomorrows homework. Even if he doesnt know what the assignment is yet. He can still study up on what is in the next chapter or subject.
Hey man, I decided to help you out getting everything ready to go practice again. What can I do to hurry things up?
You dont even need to ask, as I handed him the spacers and explained what size and where to drill the holes. The first two bolt holes will fit the studs sticking out of the intake manifold. If everything fits and clears, then nothing else needs to be done but grind and blend.
After he drilled out where I had left the center punch marks, we did a trail fit. It looked like the problem was still there. The carburetor might not be sticking out far enough yet so the low speed needle could be easily adjusted. If I flipped the carburetor over, then the linkage would not clear.
The older HL-15 carburetors we have been running this whole time, use different style needles. They didnt really stick out like these other ones do. It was simple enough to braze a small tab sticking off to one side of needle. This made it easy to slightly adjust the low speed needle out there on the track. The one down side here is it had to be perfectly indexed so the tab was accessible enough to make adjustments on the track. In the pits was not so much a problem.
So at first, I had to get the carburetor adjusted about right for most driving conditions. Basically the low speed needle had to be open enough not needing much more adjusting out on the track. For this to work on the Palmini manifold, I needed to braze a small tab sticking straight up.
Now when driving on the track I didnt need to look where the needle was. I could find the small tab sticking straight up. A slight movement forward or back to richen or lean it down. Before this, my fingers could not get into the small space to adjust. It is really that simple.
The high speed just cleared the side cover enough, so all was needed is braze a washer in the slot. Otherwise we would have to come in to the pits and use a screwdriver to make any adjustments. Actually Mr Cates had already done this on the first carburetor.
When trying out the Palmini manifold that one practice day, I realized this was a bigger problem. Using the newer carburetor, the needles had even less clearance up against the side cover. It was still almost impossible to adjust the low speed needle while on the track. That day I had adjusted it in the pits, then tweaked the high speed needle out there running laps to make sure I was in a safe area. No real fine tuning after I was comfortable the engine was on the rich side of safe.
This stock manifold locates the carburetor slightly different, so with the spacer and reed cage, plus the thickness of three gaskets, there might be enough room to possibly make adjustments while out there driving on the track. I thought about this after remembering about how hard it was to adjust when trying out the Palmini manifold.
I had an idea, if this ended up being a major problem. It might work by just rotating the carburetor. Well that would be index it so many degrees so the needles would clear the side cover of engine. Since a Tillotson can run in any position, I didnt see this as a problem. Plus with the carburetor rotated slightly, would make it look super trick.
The one down side, like there is always a down side, is I need to counter bore those two holes and screw the spacer down to the manifold. Then drill another set of holes, thread, and use long enough studs for the pyramid reed and carburetor.
This might be a good thing. Oh wait that is one of Franks personal lines. I am not allowed to use it for myself. That would be plagiarism. Or something like that. I have intentionally not jotted it down here in my journal considering the many times he has over used it.
On this carburetor adapter, I could use epoxy on gasket surface before screwing down in place. So it becomes more or less a permanent part of the manifold.
The cool factor is just seeing the carburetor rotated about ten to fifteen degrees from how it would normally bolt on. A real simple fix here is just turning the carburetor a full 90 degrees, like it would be mounted on a vertical shaft engine turned horizontal. But to me that doesnt have real cool factor going on to it. So it is down to cool or practical. And the cool factor always wins. Well most of the time.
Steve, to me it looks like we need to make some changes. A couple more holes will have to be drilled and then tapped out to 1/4-20. Those holes in the spacer now need to be counter bored. The only thing I have that might do the job is a reamer.
I will go dig one of out of the bucket over by the lathe. Go ahead and set the depth of a slightly undersized drill bit first, then follow behind that with a reamer. This should leave a flat bottom for the Allen screw to seat down on. Any questions?
Yea man, but dont you mean socket head cap screw? So where is my coke?
Hey Steve, you remember last time I bought the drinks. It was your turn to pick them up. You even told me it was no problem, right before scarfing down the last of my M&M's.
Oh yea, well I aint really thirsty right now anyway. Maybe later make a run up to the 7-11 and do that. Nah, I am good.
OK, anyway I am way ahead of you man. I figured out what you were doing after you said the low speed needle was too close to the side cover.
Another day done finished and behind me now. After school, Steve hung around instead of heading home like he would normally do during the school week. Hey man, how are things going on the kart stuff? I was hoping we might get that practice in sometime before the next stone age or ice age.
Well that depends if the Russians bomb us with the nukes. We could get bombed back to the stone age. Or if enough of the nuclear bombs go off and change the weather, then that could start the next ice age. So Steve which would you prefer?
After Steve mentioned this I thought he was referring to the Twilight Zone episode that just aired. "The Shelter". It was about friends celebrating a birthday party with a neighbor that was a doctor. Then getting interrupted by a warning of an impending nuclear attack.
While toasting drinks they commented about the good doctor wasting his time building a bomb shelter. Even complaining jokingly of course about all that noise during the evenings and inconvenience from concrete trucks blocking the street.
So the residents go scrambling around trying to prepare themselves. But then they all turn against the doctor and his family with the only bomb shelter. Naturally it ends up being a false alarm, but sure makes you think. I wonder how people might act if something like that really happened. Who could you trust?
Right now at school we practice emergency drills drills just in case of a nuclear attack from the Russians. I have doubts covering my head and back of the neck will keep me safe if a bomb goes off anywhere in the north Texas area. Once again call me skeptical. My dads parents still own the old house he grew up in . It is just across the street from moms parents. There is a storm shelter in the back yard. But seriously doubt it would be of any use as a bomb shelter. Right now i think it would be perfect as a club house.
Steve then interrupted my thoughts. How about quit being a smartace and get some engines running so we can make that practice day before either one of those things can happen.
Yea sounds like a good idea Steve. I plan to get serious this weekend and finish the engines. So far I got started on the spacers to convert over those stock manifolds and use the Go-Power 6 petal reed cages you picked up cheap a while back.
You might actually get to try them out? I was about to give up on those completely. I got a good deal on them when I bought the new rod. But since then thinking that six bucks they cost could have been better spent.
Heck no Steve, after I ran the engine with the Palmini manifold and big carburetor, it worked too good not to try them out. Just had to get some things done before I figured out how we could use them without spending any more money.
I decided to make these spacers and use the old stock manifolds. Since hogging them out and using bigger reeds helped so much, I thought we could open up the passage and use one of your Go-Power pyramid reeds this time. I dont know if it was the bored out carburetor or a combination of that and the Palmini manifold that made my engine run so well.
After running the big carburetor, I changed back to a completely stock manifold. You remember when my engine turned into a turd. It was the last thing I did on that one practice day. So I know the stock manifold is useless the way it is.
Your engine still had the manifold we opened up and put larger reeds on. But I never tried the modified carburetor on that one. So dont know for sure if it works anything like the Palmini manifold. I would like to swap some parts around the next time we are at the track just to find out exactly what works the best.
But modifying this stock intake manifold to use the pyramid reed should get us very close to how it ran with the Palmini manifold. Well at least I hope it does. I really need a practice day to do nothing but swap parts around without doing anything else.
I will have these finished, or nearly finished tomorrow before school. Then by the weekend, I will know for sure if they fit right. When we hit the track next time, then find out how well the engines run using these in place of the Palmini manifold. Steve then called it quits for the afternoon when he had to go home.
The next morning I got to school early as possible. Steve has band practice so I hitched a ride with him. His dad usually takes him to school early when there is practice. So today, I had plenty of time to spend on the spacers.
Mr Sadeskey was no where to be found. The shop was open with the lights on, but only the one side of shop where the lathe is. I didnt want to just walk in and help myself. Another ten minutes went by and still no teacher. Since he knew I was going to be here today, I decided to go ahead and start back on the spacers.
I figured out how to turn the lathe on, so that was the only hold up yesterday. But I later realized Mr Sadeskey had not intended on me using the lathe just yet. Not until he gave me the low down on operating it. Just having that little Craftsman lathe at home doesnt mean I have a clue how to operate this big monster sized Clausing Colchester lathe here at school.
I got my wits about me today. Then looked over my shoulder and checked out the pocked out places on the cinder block wall. Since there was no new chunks on the floor yesterday morning, my little accident could have been filling in an existing disaster.
It would be smart of me to wait and let Mr Sadeskey give me the whole spew on operating this lathe. I would like to know for sure about some things I already sort of figured out. But standing here I could be waiting until the bell rings. He did not return yesterday until after the first bell had already sounded off.
So this morning I need to use my smarts. Thats them things Frank always talks about. But have no idea what he means. His reference is usually about the book learning kind of smarts. I prefer the common sense type smarts when working with machinery.
I opened up the chuck and set the round part in, then made sure it was secure. A quick check to confirm it was running flat by cranking out the tail stock spindle face against my part. Then time to start drilling out that center hole. I found some drill bits in the tool crib, then made my first pass. After smaller ones I stepped up to a 3/4 inch drill bit. Next thing is set up a small boring bar to finish it out to size.
I wonder how a professional machinist would make these parts? Should I bore out the hole first then cut the taper. Or maybe go ahead and set it up then machine the taper out to size? Yesterday all of the ninth graders piled in here getting really nosy about what I was doing. But now thinking they are in Power mechanics, not machine shop. Maybe I am just too insecure about someone watching me working on a machine i dont really know how to operate. Its not like I have ever taken shop class before.
I estimated the taper by calculating the correct angle last night at home. Basic geometry to get that angle figured out. It was fairly straight forward in the Machinery Handbook. Even realizing how to use the trig tables calculating the angle was no big deal.
Just lots of numbers that made no sense without some useful purpose. The calculated numbers worked out to be just under 7 degrees. Like 6 degrees and 57 minutes. Since I dont trust myself doing mathematical calculations, time to confirm using common sense.
Rotating the top slide or compound, as it is also called, around was not that accurate, since I could only guess between whole degrees. But if I held the base of pyramid reed cage up against the face of chuck, then rotate top slide around until it lays flat against the side of cage....Well there it is. I checked the degrees of rotation on the scale. It shows right at 7 degrees. Close enough.
With a small boring bar in place of the usual turning or face cutting tool, I made a few passes in the existing 3/4 diameter hole. After a whole bunch more passes, then the taper was cut out close to size on the first spacer. This is easy enough to do. I can get used to this kind of work.
Using the shops vernier caliper, I checked the size of large end. It measured more than close enough. Then I can confirm this by dropping in the 6 petal pyramid reed assembly. If it still needs to open it up some more, then use a hand held grinder at home. For now I wanted to be able to bolt this to the manifold, then blend and make a good fit thru the intake passage. Clean it up with just enough clearance for the pyramid reed to fit snugly in place.
What the heck? The taper is not even close. I still have problems with the small screws that hold the reeds on too. They dont clear the opening at all. OK, I can tell the angle is way off. It needs to be more. So first i will try getting this right. Then figure out what to do about getting the screws to clear.
I kept increasing the angle all the way up to 12 degrees. This last cut I now see is too much. I backed off less than 1/2 degree and a few more passes seems close enough to more forward. To clear the screw heads, all I did was a straight bore deep enough for them to fit. Wow that wasnt so difficult. I got this covered.
My grandfather had given dad his old Dremel Moto grinder. It has all kinds of attachments that should work great to do the finish work on these spacers. Everything can get blended nice and smooth. Almost look like a fancy porting job when finished.
It was almost time for me to bail out of here before I saw Mr Sadeskey. I apologized for going ahead and starting with out confirming everything. But he reassured me it was fine. He had left the shop open for me to get working in case he was not back any time soon. There was some attendance sheets that he had to turn in to the office.
I thanked him again for the help and would bring the parts by so he could see what I was doing in a few days. I had more work that needed to be done at home before they were finished. I made it across the hall to Drafting class with plenty of time to spare today. It was boring to do even more 3-D drawings again. How many times drawing the same type of shapes before we move on to something else?
Well today we did elliptical instead of three dimensional round shapes. This was a lot more difficult than I first thought. We were not allowed to use any templates this time. At the odd angles we were drawing, would not have helped anyway. I had to calculate the arcs and radius before any stick pictures could be drawn. This took up half the time in class. I wonder if Algebra could help out in any way to calculate? Probably no such luck. But being able to use any Algebra would at least help me figure what to do with it.
Algebra class sucked as usual. I still have no clue what this stuff was good for. But for English, I got an assignment to write a short story. Hum....I wonder? No particular subject. Just different styles of writing. OK maybe I can pull this off.
Out of the different choices I have to pick from, there is one that might fly. I take a story, and write a condensed version, like in Readers Digest. How hard could it be to condense the notes I have been keeping on all of our karting escapades and turn it into a short story? I turned it in last year as a completed story. But since then added a lot to what happened since then.
So what if the teacher thinks it is boring to her. That wasnt the assignment to make it exciting. Just a condensed story. I can use the one I wrote last year in Language Arts. It needs some serious cleaning up. I had no clue about first, second or third person writing at the time.
But after proof reading my story about ten thousand times before turning it in, I better figured some of that stuff out. It is still difficult to make easy to understand sometimes. Especially if I am jumping from one character to the other. It seemed to me the story didnt flow so smoothly or as believable if I kept including "I said" or "he said" delivering a conversation between the characters.
Another choice is mocking up an advertisement like in a newspaper or magazine. I had to include some type of sales hype and presentation. Included would be a short but detailed description of the product for the ad. Hmm, I wonder, could something like a kart or part advert work for this? All of the aftermarket engine parts claiming massive power increases sure seems to get readers attention.
From all of the questions in Jim Butlers Karting Corner, there are a lot of people relying on the product testing and inquiring about those hotrod parts for nearly every engine running at the tracks.
Well that assignment is not due for a while, so it goes on the back burner for now. If something new doesnt slap me hard in the face, I will resort to rewriting last years story.
Back home Steve showed up again, which was unexpected. We usually ride the bus together, and he bails out headed straight for home. He usually has homework even when he doesnt have homework. His mom makes sure there is nothing he is lagging on in any of his classes. If he has finished todays work, then go ahead and start tomorrows homework. Even if he doesnt know what the assignment is yet. He can still study up on what is in the next chapter or subject.
Hey man, I decided to help you out getting everything ready to go practice again. What can I do to hurry things up?
You dont even need to ask, as I handed him the spacers and explained what size and where to drill the holes. The first two bolt holes will fit the studs sticking out of the intake manifold. If everything fits and clears, then nothing else needs to be done but grind and blend.
After he drilled out where I had left the center punch marks, we did a trail fit. It looked like the problem was still there. The carburetor might not be sticking out far enough yet so the low speed needle could be easily adjusted. If I flipped the carburetor over, then the linkage would not clear.
The older HL-15 carburetors we have been running this whole time, use different style needles. They didnt really stick out like these other ones do. It was simple enough to braze a small tab sticking off to one side of needle. This made it easy to slightly adjust the low speed needle out there on the track. The one down side here is it had to be perfectly indexed so the tab was accessible enough to make adjustments on the track. In the pits was not so much a problem.
So at first, I had to get the carburetor adjusted about right for most driving conditions. Basically the low speed needle had to be open enough not needing much more adjusting out on the track. For this to work on the Palmini manifold, I needed to braze a small tab sticking straight up.
Now when driving on the track I didnt need to look where the needle was. I could find the small tab sticking straight up. A slight movement forward or back to richen or lean it down. Before this, my fingers could not get into the small space to adjust. It is really that simple.
The high speed just cleared the side cover enough, so all was needed is braze a washer in the slot. Otherwise we would have to come in to the pits and use a screwdriver to make any adjustments. Actually Mr Cates had already done this on the first carburetor.
When trying out the Palmini manifold that one practice day, I realized this was a bigger problem. Using the newer carburetor, the needles had even less clearance up against the side cover. It was still almost impossible to adjust the low speed needle while on the track. That day I had adjusted it in the pits, then tweaked the high speed needle out there running laps to make sure I was in a safe area. No real fine tuning after I was comfortable the engine was on the rich side of safe.
This stock manifold locates the carburetor slightly different, so with the spacer and reed cage, plus the thickness of three gaskets, there might be enough room to possibly make adjustments while out there driving on the track. I thought about this after remembering about how hard it was to adjust when trying out the Palmini manifold.
I had an idea, if this ended up being a major problem. It might work by just rotating the carburetor. Well that would be index it so many degrees so the needles would clear the side cover of engine. Since a Tillotson can run in any position, I didnt see this as a problem. Plus with the carburetor rotated slightly, would make it look super trick.
The one down side, like there is always a down side, is I need to counter bore those two holes and screw the spacer down to the manifold. Then drill another set of holes, thread, and use long enough studs for the pyramid reed and carburetor.
This might be a good thing. Oh wait that is one of Franks personal lines. I am not allowed to use it for myself. That would be plagiarism. Or something like that. I have intentionally not jotted it down here in my journal considering the many times he has over used it.
On this carburetor adapter, I could use epoxy on gasket surface before screwing down in place. So it becomes more or less a permanent part of the manifold.
The cool factor is just seeing the carburetor rotated about ten to fifteen degrees from how it would normally bolt on. A real simple fix here is just turning the carburetor a full 90 degrees, like it would be mounted on a vertical shaft engine turned horizontal. But to me that doesnt have real cool factor going on to it. So it is down to cool or practical. And the cool factor always wins. Well most of the time.
Steve, to me it looks like we need to make some changes. A couple more holes will have to be drilled and then tapped out to 1/4-20. Those holes in the spacer now need to be counter bored. The only thing I have that might do the job is a reamer.
I will go dig one of out of the bucket over by the lathe. Go ahead and set the depth of a slightly undersized drill bit first, then follow behind that with a reamer. This should leave a flat bottom for the Allen screw to seat down on. Any questions?
Yea man, but dont you mean socket head cap screw? So where is my coke?
Hey Steve, you remember last time I bought the drinks. It was your turn to pick them up. You even told me it was no problem, right before scarfing down the last of my M&M's.
Oh yea, well I aint really thirsty right now anyway. Maybe later make a run up to the 7-11 and do that. Nah, I am good.
OK, anyway I am way ahead of you man. I figured out what you were doing after you said the low speed needle was too close to the side cover.