Tune Up & Maintenance Tools
Healey Journal
Once the car's all together again I'll need to keep it runnning well. To do that I'll need various tools for maintaining it and tuning it up whenever necessary.
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Various Maintenance and Tuning Tools:
Test Equipment Useful for maintaining your carand enjoying it....
Timing Adjustment How to adjust the timing
Valve Adjustment How to adjust valve gaps
Carb Adjustment How to adjust the carburaters
Oil & Cooling How to flush and change the oil and filter, flush the cooling system, change a thermostat....
Test Equipment A few tools will greatly ease tuning your car and ensuring that it is running well. The minimum requirements are for a Dwell-Tachometer, timing light and "feeler" guages; a carb balancing manometer would be useful as would an exhaust gass analyzer. Other minor test equipment needed less frequent ly would be a compression tester, a vaccum guage and coolant and battery testers.
Dwell-Tachometer: a guage that serves two purposes (or more- getting a guage that also provides more general features for measurung resistence, voltage and amperage will be more valuable than one limited to just the automotive tuning interests). The ignition points can be set to open using feeler guages that provide a physical measure of the distance opened. This is then usually more finely tuned by hand to get a better running engine, or by using a dwell meter that guages how "long" the points are open in terms of degrees. This is usually the most effective method for setting the points.
To Come.
Timing Light: In addition to the dwell that controls how long the points are open (and the resulting intensity of the spark produced) the timing of when the spark is produced is also an important factor in the engine's running. If the spark is too soon the fuel will be ignited early- before the fuel/air mixture is sufficiently pressurized, or too late when the pressure is reducing.
Feeler Guages: Usually just a simple set of thin metal strips, each a specified thickness. These generally have two uses: setting the points gap and the gap for the spark plug electrodes. There may be other uses in setting clearances, as for carb floats and points gaps in some Lucas fuel pumps.... Setting the gaps for the spark plugs is important for properly igniting the pressurized fuel/air mixture. If the gap is too tight the spark will not be as large as desired; if it is too wide the spark will be weakened by the extra distance.
Setting the dwell, timing and spark gaps ensure that the electrical elements are appropriately set for the efficient running of the engine- the spark occurs at the right time and lasts as long as it's needed. The other critical aspect is ensuring that the fuel-air mixture is appropriate- that the carb and its delivery of the fuel works well.
Carb Balancing Manometer: Many British sports cars have multiple carbs, most commonly a pair of SU carbs (as with my Rochdale) or less frequently, a pair of Delortos (or Webers) as with my Jensen-Healey; or the big-sixes like My Austin-Healey (or Jags...) with its 3 SUs or even 3 Webers for a modified car. The balancing of the carbs ensures that all "flow" equal volumes of air.
Exhaust Gas Analyzer: ?????????????????????????
Compression Tester: Not the sort of testing that's often needed... this tests for major mechanical problems- things like a blown head gasket, worn rings, worn valves, etc. In effect it measures how well each cylinder in the engine holds pressure. When the engine is turned over the piston pulls air in and then compresses it. The tester measures the pressure, which should be within given specifications; and approximately the same for all cylinders. Too low a value, or significant differences indicate some type of problem.
A more sophisticated version is a Leak-Down Tester. This uses an external source of compressed air to pressurize the cylinder and then check for various flaws. This can more effectively identify particular problems associated with the valves that the standard approach cannot since it uses the normal operation of the valves to pressurize the cylinder.
Vacuum guage: This too is not the sort of test that's needed often. It too can be used to test for internal problems with an engine's valves, but it can also be used for judging other less serious tuning problems like timing of carb problems. One point to note is that these are often used as "mileage" guages to judge how economically a car is driven- heavy acceleration will use more fuel and in so doing the "sucking" will be detected by the guage and shown as a lower vacuum.
Coolant and battery testers: I must confess to having just the cheap ones, rather than the nice but much more expensive professional ones. Regardless of whether they're cheap and nasty hobbyist ones or the snazzy proper ones bot work on the basis of measuring the density (specific gravity) of the fluid involved. As the ratio of coolant to water increases its density is affected and that can be measured. So too for batteries, but with the concentration of battery acid being the density measured.
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Copyright© 2003 James M. Wilson All rights reserved.