I was told the DIR32's over time have a tendancy to get the carb bolts loose with everyday engine vibrations......
How often will they have to be tightened?

best thing is to secure them with Loctite 243 one at a time that way you'll only have to check it every small service

But whatever you do, DO NOT over tighten, however much you may be tempted to do that! You'll only strip the threads.

Right, not sure if this is related to the loose carb issue (i'll be checking the carb in the morning) but the last two times i've switched the car off (1.4) there has been some pretty dramatic full bodied shakes from front to back. And for a sustained few seconds as well. However, these shakes only happen after turning off the ignition. I've had a poke about for answers but can't find any. Maybe misalignment between engine/diff but only the rattles when turning off? Answers on a postcard please

Sounds like the engine is dieselling / running on, potentially because the idle mixture is set too rich. Pop the spark plugs out, and see what the deposits look like.

cheers

James

Or the idle shut off solenoid is stuck "open".
It shouldn't matter how rich the idle mixture is - when you kill the ignition the solenoid should totally close off the idle bypass passage.

Or primary barrel butterfly setting incorrect allowing the engine to bypass the idle system and draw mixture from the transition port or main jets.

Or the carb top is loose allowing fuel to "weir over" from the float chamber.

Mac.

Could be possible this kind of Shakey be for octane petrol?
I use 95oct unlead petrol and some times began to shakey after 3 or 4 km

I occasionally ran a high-mileage 1.4 on 95 RON instead of 97 and the only effect was pinking on slopes and at 'high' speed... fairly major pinking and I think blew me head-gasket in the end... (the one on the car I mean, the other one has gone too many times to remember...)... Idle solenoid was always the main cause of running unsteady for me.... If anything else went wrong it didn't run at all.