The strange thing is I don't have an auto choke The blurry thing in the bottom right of the photo is the wire and adjustment for the manual choke.

So do I pull the wires on the front solenoid leaving all the hoses where they are?

I may even try soldering the wire back on to the part at the block, put everything back to where it was and see if it is something totally separate that is causing the problem.

Ok, this is the little culprit:





This is the "thing" that I bypassed. The vacuum advance on the distributor connected to the right hand side of this and then the left hand side connected to the carby.

I don't but I can get one and put it up tonight/tomorrow.

I might see if I can find something similar on here, might be lucky.

Ok, those wires from this part lead back to a unit at the rear of the intake manifold (behind the carby) so I bypassed that with a new piece of vacuum hose. It didn't really make much difference Should I also be disconnecting the unit at the front that can be seen in the original picture?

The other question I have is what do other people set their timing at? I have mine set on the factory 7 degrees but I am thinking that I might up it to 10 degrees (it seems to idle smoother at 10 )

Thoughts?

Cool, thanks dd One less thing to worry about.

Thanks for that, it probably explains why it is running bad now as well. It feels like it did before I adjusted the timing.

Now to find a replacement!

Does it have anything to do with a little spring loaded butterfly that is built into the old (original) exhaust manifold? A picture may speak a thousand words in this instance but I don't have one handy!

It seems to have a bit more power, it certainly revs easier and has a raspy note to it.

When I picked it up from getting done, I started the car and then sat there giggling as it idled! People waiting in traffic must have wondered what was going on.

It is definately louder.

It is a little hard to tell just how much of a difference it has made because it is not running the best now, it was perfect when I drove it in but I think I need to adjust the idle and timing a little to see if it smooths it out a little. It now has a surge of power higher in the rev range which is why I described it as a flat spot before, that's what it feels like before the surge.

It is a 1984, Australian delivered.

Thermostat is only a few months old, changed it after it got a little hot under the collar on the way to and on a skid pan

The reason I asked about the anti-pollution stuff is to keep the government people happy if they stick their heads under the bonnet

The sound turns a lot more heads than it used to.

My insurance company doesn't care what I do to the car as long as it's legal and I would say binning all anti-pollution might be frowned upon. As long as it looks like it works then that's all that matters.

I ended up getting Hurricane Extractors and the exhaust and extractors were fitted by Rob Bliss Exhausts.

I'll stick with the head I have at the moment. I wasn't going to change anything on this car but that lasted about a week.