Another 3 days and its holding up nicely. Battery re-charged for Tuesday.



Hope this bodes well.

Good sign!

Right, bits of news. There was a big drop in the fuel level over the last couple of days...



... worrying, but the car started, which is good, so took it for a drive but after 30 min the ignition just died ;-0 arf (not on a main road, thankfully). It was a case of wiggling the connections on the back of the fuse box, so we are back in that game again. Will need to remove the fusebox and clean the connections, etc. The new rear exhaust section is knocking like the clappers so that will need removing, hammering in and refitting. The renix 407 seems good but the idle speed is not right (1100) so that will need a look at, too.

So it's back to the 1.7, for a bit anyway.

Going to try to run her as everyday transport from tomorrow onwards since the starting and ignition have been reliable. Couple of final jobs: underseal a bit of welding done by the garage and fit a new jubilee clip to the petrol tank filler pipe.







The exhaust mountings are a bit wonky/customised (one has disappeared c/o tinworm and the garage!) but all seemed to work fine during a couple of test runs, having previously hammered in the part of the pipe which knocks!

Seems OK in the wild. How's about that then? A 4 year fit-it-and-forget-it repair, hopefully.

Good news! Definitely worth fitting new clips to that fuel tank hose, I fitted new stainless ones when I had my tank out - the originals do like to disintegrate!

Not quite fit-and-forget since the car had an occassional issue of idling too fast (2000 rpm) which I couldn't easily sort out. I had noticed that the problem was due to the plunger at the side of the carb (which is to do with float chamber ventilation) kept getting pulled into the down position by the plastic lever. However, a couple of hours fiddling about revealed that it had a *very* simple cause - the choke cable had become a bit bent in all the previous shenanigans and was not allowing the carbie cams and levers to go fully back to ground-zero when the choke was pushed in. However, after a bit of straightening, I can sleep peacefully now.



And, the starting is OK, too.

The car started after 2-3 weeks standing with fuel level in the filter really low and on a fairly flat battery. Non-return valve seems to do the business.

I love that you’ve kept this thread updated!

Thank you. I drove the 360 yesterday without any problems. The non-return valve seems to solve the problem as the car always starts now. The mixture is a bit rich, though. Maybe, a tweak of that well-hidden screw is needed. Cheers, bogs.

Yo! The car was left standing for a week of fairly solid heat and it started after a few tries, so I think its more-or-less fully sorted by the non-return valve.

Running on super unleaded 97 or 99 RON petrol, I get loads of bucking at low speed if in too high a gear. Traffic jams very amusing, not.

On the 95 RON petrol, it seems better, although I haven't done statistical significance tests ;-0 ;-0

Spose it makes sense??

E10 forever ;-0

P.S. I shouldn't say this, but starting has been completely reliable.

Bit more testing shows it's the heat, not the petrol

I am trying to avoid E10 where possible, and certainly for the 360, only premium VPower or the likes.
Looking at some sort of fuel treatment for normal use and over the winter the tank will be brimmed and treated with Stabil, or similar.
Aside from concerns over fuel hoses I don't think E10 will do our filters, carbs, injectors, pumps etc any good. Maybe ok if in very regular use but any irregular use or periods of lay up you need to plan ahead with some sort of fuel treatment.
Its a large and long debate on the E10 subject for sure !

Cool. I'm sure you're right. I was basing it on a fuelly website which allowed you to check your car for compatibility with E10. For Vovlovs it said all models since 80s (from memory, will check) were compatible except some models I hadn't heard of from the 90's which I assumed were fairly obscure ones. For Rovers it said there was no info available since they went bust. That was about the depth of it really. Additives for storage look good. My Hyundai can run on E70, well, it's worse than that, it takes 70 % ethanol/water mix (overproof rum, yum . Bit of peroxide and you could launch nuclear missile ;-0