This rather nice VW Type 3 automatic was dropped off today for some work. It's been getting progressively more difficult to start, hot or cold, and a compression check carried out elsewhere suggested issues with the top end. I'll carry out my own compression check first, if the results are poor I'll start at the outside and work my way towards the centre, depending on what's discovered. I'll check the valves are closing first, if they are I'll pull the heads and see if there

This Beetle 1300 came in on Friday, the owner has only recently bought it and it had a few issues, the most annoying being that it wouldn't idle when warm. It had an aftermarket carburettor fitted but came with the original Solex PICT 30 so I cleaned that out first and fitted it and thought I'd cracked it, it idled for ages and ran sweetly but wouldn't get up the driveway. Today I stripped and cleaned the Chinese made carb and that did the trick, it was a lot easier to set th

...but that's not quite the end of it. The final assembly of the engine and refitting all went well and, other than gasket error between the PCV spacer plate and the new Edelbrock intake manifold (that was fixed by inverting the plate), it fired right up. I had taken the liberty of priming the carburettor, that helped. I've yet to check the timing and the idle mixture might need a tweak to match the new engine but otherwise it sounds nice. After a couple of starts the starter

This Morris 1300 was dropped off a week or so ago, the AA man had got it going enough for the new owner to get it up to the workshop but it wasn't running right. As a matter of course I replaced the spark plugs, HT leads, cap & rotor and decided to refit points instead of the electronic ignition. I also replaced all of the fuel hoses with r9 and fitted a fuel filter. The test drive went well but I'd made a bit of a schoolboy error, when I refitted the air filter box in readin