MORLEY’S FIVE STAR WORKSHOP
Got A Problem?
SEND YOUR EMAILS TO: uniquecars@bauertrader.com.au or via snail mail at Unique Cars, Locked Bag 12, Oakleigh, 3166. Yep, he’s gonna fix you up in no time…
CARB WHISPERER
Acoupe of issues ago, I outlined the ongoing story of my little RA40 Celica. Ugly little brute that it is, I’m still pretty keen on it and a large part of that is that the bonnet now keeps the bird-crap off an 18RG twin-cam engine, rather than the Corona-spec boat-anchor that it was born with. This is indeed good news, because as well as about twice the power at the tyres, the 18RG is a supremely grunty little fella that also has the ability to rev to 7000 (and yes, I’ve tried it, and yes it does).
My buddy Tim 2 (who fitted the engine, and not to be confused with Tim 1 who gifted me the engine that had been sitting in his Bris Vegas garage for about 18 years) helped me locate and weld up an exhaust leak and also cleaned out the fuel tank for me, evicting 18 years’ worth of spiders and crud (or so we thought).
Which really only left finding a side-draft guru who could tune the little bastard into a degree of civility. Until now, my own fiddling had given the carbs the ability to run properly at wide open throttle, but not much else. At one stage, I’d managed to more or less sort out the idle speed and stop the bugger from popping and farting when it was cold, but guess hat happened then? Yep, I got cocky, kept fiddling and ended up back at square one with a pair of carbs that clearly weren’t on speaking terms, let alone holding hands and singing from the same page.
Enter Randy; an old-school carb whisperer based in Bayswater not far from the MBC. Randy’s business is called the Datsun 1600 Workshop. I like a bloke who tells it how it is and leaves the marketing hoo-ha to the millennials. I also knew, from the moment I walked into the shop, that Randy and me were going to get along fine and that
