STAFF CARS SILVER SHADOW PROJECT
Surely it’s time we got this car running as it should. Though we made the car start and run steadily enough soon after we acquired it in 2022, it never drove well, seeming terribly down on power or responsiveness. An attempted tuning session with our local Rolls-Royce & Bentley specialist, Ross McLeod of Mulsanne Motors in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, established that nothing was too far from where it should be, but that the carburettor jets were seized. Serious doubts existed over the state of the fuel supply – a bad pump? Blocked lines? Sort these flaws and it should be fine.
This was enough to provoke a carburettor rebuild, which I performed myself with the kit available from Flying Spares. All seemed to go well enough, with clean components going backfloat-height settings and so forth. Yet back on the car, we couldn’t get it to start. As recounted a couple of issues back, the plain washer that should sit on top of the inlet manifold fixing was sitting below it, causing a huge air leak – all my own fault. When back together as it should have been, it started straight away.
