Well, I must have been an axe murderer in a previous life. Karma apparently has come to haunt me.
I installed a new soft top on the TR7 Sprint, and suddenly the weather turned nice. I decided it was time for a real shakedown drive on the Sprint, to see where all the bugs were. I had started the Sprint many times, adjusting the idle, mixture, timing and the FASD for a smooth start and warm up. Time to see what else needs to be tweaked.
Hopped in, made it one block and the oil pressure warning light came on.
I did not believe it for the first 5 seconds. New oil pump, filter, gaskets, fresh oil and I had not seen any problems with oil pressure during the test start ups. Drove 50 yards further and the light did not shut off. Dammit. Turned around and limped home, trailing as it turned out, a steady trickle of oil down the street, up the driveway and into the garage. <mumble>
The culprit was the 40 year old oil pressure sender, which had decided to pack it in, and oil was leaking out around the connector. Now I am waiting for a new sender from my FLAPS. <sigh>
In other news...
Using the Zenith carbs allowed me to reuse the original throttle linkage which is activated by a cable on the TR7. Fussing with the linkage during a test fit, I discovered that the factory linkage did not allow the butterflies to fully open. They only rotated through approximately 3/4 of the 90 degrees needed for wide open throttle. Triumph TR7 owners everywhere should rise up over this little fact. The flaccid federal motor only puts out 95HP to start with, and giving up 1/4 of your throttle travel certainly does not help matters.
With a little creative drilling and filing, I modified the stock linkage to allow a true WOT when the accelerator is fully depressed. I have attached a photo of the modifications. I quickly discovered that it was possible to alter the linkage in such a way that the throttle would stick wide open. Off the side of the road, and through the guard rail we would go...
OK, with that little problem avoided, I got a good result and thought I would share. Dunno if the Dolly uses a similar scheme or not, but it is something people might wish to check on the off chance that this sort of thing is standard practice. It may be only for the US market in an effort to meet emissions or avoid offending our ridiculous tort laws.
In the photos, I added the middle mounting hole for the cable and trimmed the bell crank mechanism to allow more (but not too much!) travel. Note also that there were two factory supplied mounting holes for the linkage rod, and I moved the rod to the otherwise unused hole and plugged the original mounting point with a rivet to prevent future confusion.
Will be posting more whining notes as time goes on...
Vance