Thanks for the responses fellas - I'll try your suggestions tonight when I get home and post the results here.

It's driving me nutty...

just 2 cents worth, does happen when only the car is hot if so it may be the fuel is vapourising in the line due to the heat from the manifold

Well it is when the cars hot, but when left for ten minutes to a hour or so, if you turn it off and straight back on, no worries, but more seems like the needle and seat not seating and leaking fuel back through with the pump being a bit under pressure, with my problem it is flooding because it gives a nice black puff of smoke on start up, you need to floor it to clear it! Also I tried adjusting the float level again, didnt have any luck, all i did was make it run out of fuel. Ok, fuel float is level, now on the new needle and seat, the ball on the end, is that meant to guage the 1.5mm gap? Also the steel clip is that meant to sit in the slot on the needle valve itself and stop the needle valve moving in and out?

Has anyone had trouble with the needle valve clips? the brand of carb kit is a fuel meiser, its giving me the ####s I tell you!

Ok - sorry about the delay in updates.

The story is that it IS emptying the fuel bowl into the motor and flooding it. Exactly the same problem as WhiteSedan by the looks.

I followed out Dodgemans instructions and stuck an extra washer under the needle and seat, but to no avail! It still slowly empties the fuel bowl.

Any other suggestions on how to attack this prob?

A little diamond-based polish you may be able to 'lap' the surfaces together more neatly.

Chris

Perhaps, but I don't quite understand how any of this has anything to do with the needle and seat - that lets fuel into the float bowl and shuts off when it's full.

somehow fuel is escaping elsewhere and draining the float bowl and flooding the engine.

How could this be the needle and seat? It doesn't stop fuel exiting the float bowl, only enetering...

I think I might be up for a visit to a carby specialist...

Standard Carb?

Are there any fuel stains anywhere? If it is the stock carb, they can sometimes leak from the "jet bungs" (I dunno), where you get to the main jets.

I would remove the carb, fill the floatbowl and look for wet areas to appear. A rebuild kit should fix the problem unless the body is cracked.

Hmmm... yep it's a standard carb - and clean as a whistle inside and out too - it was rebuilt not long ago.

I reckon I will have to pull it off on the weekend... and do just that - cheers Cable_Tie

I don't know how this turned out but I encountered (and fixed) a similar problem. I had mistakenly diagnosed a clogged fuel line and replaced the fuel pump on my 1200.

My car started suffering the same symptons as described above. Started fine when cold, hard as hell to start when warm, and exhibited symptoms of flooding.

The problem was the cheap-o replacement fuel pump was putting out over 6psi at idle. I installed the factory fuel pump (which wasn't bad as it turns out) and that puts out a bit more than 2 psi at idle.

This solved the problem. A simple vacuum/pressure tester can tell you what's happening with the fuel pressure.

Now I get to go back to the parts store and explain that the pump works, but it's out of spec for the application. That should be fun..