lo-fi

You have an air leak. Setting the carbs up richer has masked it, and the high idle you're now seeing is caused by the extra air, plus an artificially rich mixture ahead of the leak allowing it to fire properly. Check the brake servo connection, various bungs that may or may not be in the inlet manifold and finally the inlet gasket itself. A can of carb cleaner sprayed around while running is a good diagnostic tool. If the revs change as you waft the spray around, you're close to the source of the leak. Just be careful not to spray too much! Listen for a hissing sound too. I'd get more or less this from my Strombergs if I left the brake servo connection off (or not blanked if you have no servo). No reason it would be any different on the SU's.

Morning I'm starting a new Land Rover related venture which requires a fair amount of welding. I can weld well enough, but if I'm selling bits that people are hopefully going to be using on their vehicles, I need to be able to prove that with the correct paperwork. Does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations for training and certification in the central South? All will be revealed in due course Many thanks! Ian

To echo what Mike and Snagger said: Injecting fuel way after tdc makes hideous black smoke as the cylinder pressure isn't high enough and the charge isn't dense enough to burn the fuel completely. The net result is similar to a restriction in the intake. If I recall correctly, the pulley isn't keyed to the pump and relies purely on the taper fit to maintain the timing, so that slipping is also an option.

Is the clutch biting low? Sounds like it might not be disengaging completely. My LT85 is a bit notchy when cold on 20W50, but not so bad in the summer. I have to make sure I'm not being lazy with the clutch or it's quite sticky until warm.

It's the distance from the plenum to the valve my mate got wrong, but injectors on a multi point setup should ideally be placed at certain distances/angles. To get a simple setup working - as Fridge suggests - just take a feed from the dizzy cool connection to feed the ecu an rpm signal. If you want to do spark control too (this is where real power/efficiency gains are to be had), you can just lock the mechanical and vacuum advance mechs in the dizzy and use the points as a cam/crank position sensor with the ecu driving the coil. Bowie ninja'd me with this one, but we're on the same page

Multi point injection has many advantages: Fuel has very little chance to condense in the intake, so delivery is pretty much guaranteed to be even. Smaller injectors are much easier to modulate at low flow rates. Fuel is injected at an area where intake air speed should be highest, giving best atomisation and mixing. That being said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with single point injection on an old clunker like a 2.25. It's basically just an electronic carb replacement, so all you'd need is a small adaptor plate and you're in business. My mate built himself a lovely Essex V6 for his 88 and made himself a custom manifold with a multi point setup. Unfortunately, he didn't pay much attention to the intake tract length and squished the plenum right into the V, giving very short runners. Now, if you don't know much about this, intake runner length is important and needs to be tuned against the cam duration and port size. On his setup, for best performance they should have been 24" long (look at the thor V8 setup). It ran, but anything under 4000 revs it would fart, pop and spit and generally not behave. Very little power too. In the end, after much discussion, we concluded that his 3" intake runners weren't getting any kind of momentum in the intake charger close the the valves (which stops flow reversals when the intake valve closes) and he decided to go for a carb manifold and the simple single point throttle body setup, rather than making a very elaborate multi point manifold. Happy to say, it works like a charm and now performs and behaves as it should. For an EFI setup on the 2.25, I'd look no further. And by the way: speeduino is a fraction of the cost of MS and perfectly adequate for this application - it's what he's using on his V6. It's pretty much a clone of MS - you even tune it with Tunerstudio - but on cheaper, generic hardware.

My bet would be on the pump timing having jumped a tooth or two. White smoke is unburned fuel, so you're either looking at intake restriction, lack of compression or the timing being off. In your case, as its happened all of a sudden and you've eliminated the intake stuff, you can move straight to the last two. If its running smoothly, it's unlikely to be head gasket, so timing seems a good place to start.

The law requires that I confirm that this is all true...

Not to a 2.25, but a mate has done so to an Essex V6. Works well enough. For a tinkered with 2.25, ACR have been doing that for a while: https://www.automotivecomp.com/services/land-rover-products-and-services/

Proper job! Those pieces of pipe on the drain holes to stop water running along underneath the plate are a great idea. My second sankey is currently in service as a paddling pool with some polystyrene on the floor and a pond liner clipped inside. Also a hot tub with the addition of an Eberspacher. Got used as a semi mobile work platform for hedge trimming the other week too. The uses are endless

Running really rich tends to make them overheat, which can break up the substrate. Burning oil similarly, and also coolant getting into the exhaust can have an effect. A knackered plug or lead can cause a cylinder not to fire efficiently, sending some unburned fuel down the exhaust, which is not always obvious on the V8. It could equally be that they're just old, been abused in a previous life and had their day now.

I'm running disco manifolds on mine, which are a little different left and right hand and exit slightly different places. I wouldn't worry about it too much, so long as both manifolds have the same port and outlet sizes. The later ones (disco, RR etc) seem to be better port matched than the early SD1, P6 etc. so will flow better.

There's a hole in the spring mount on the axle which the nob in the leaf is supposed to locate in; this arrangement keeps the axle in the correct place, but allows a small amount of rotation as the suspension flexes. It won't appear loose if set up correctly, though. The plate that the brake line mounts to has a similar hole, though I believe larger if memory serves. You'll find that the U bolts have stretched, leaving the play you're seeing. If you've run out of thread to tighten them up correctly, you'll need new U bolts. New bolts aren't expensive and probably a good idea at this point anyway. Hopefully that's all they've pulled you up on and you're back on the road soon

Toyota Celica 2.0 auto ~1982 Nissan micra 1.2 (given by my gran when she gave up driving) Land Rover 2A 88 soft top (my aunts, but she never drove it and I did. Lots) Toyota MR2 1.6 - 1986 Toyota MR2 1.6 - 1989 (loved the MR2's, hated the rust) Land Rover 88 S3 3.5 V8 (hilarious but heroically knackered) Land Rover 109 S3 2.25 petrol, later converted to 3.9 V8 (still have) Mazda RX7 - 1993 2.6 twin turbo (worst car I've ever owned. Unmaintainable money pit of the worst kind ever conceived. Even worse than a Land Rover) Audi A4 1.9tdi quattro - 1994 (reached 370K. Fantastic car) Audi A4 1.8 turbo quattro - 1996 (still have)

A plausible explanation I've heard regarding supermarket fuel is that they buy up whatever they can cheap. This probably means it's fuel getting near the end of its "shelf life". We all know what stale fuel in an old mower is like... Having done some tests myself, I don't buy supermarket fuel. My 1.8t Audi does around 25 miles per tank less on supermarket stuff than Esso, BP or Shell. Given the meagre difference in price, I'll go branded every time.

Autosparks. Quality stuff, you really can't go wrong. Nice looking landy

I was curious and looked it up: http://www.discovery2.co.uk/propshafts.html

Can't remember if it's in the thread, but I used to top nut on the stuck pivot to pull it free with use of a few spacers and washers. Check the brake expanders too, they might need freeing up. The tailgate is a nice mod, makes it decidedly more useful.

Are you running PAS? it'll make the steering feel very heavy if not

Here's what I did to mine. Turned it into quite a useful bit of kit. The brake linkage pivot in the axle always seizes up, so worth a look at that. And think about replacing the shocks; they seem to almost always be knackered. Think I've got 88" front shocks on mine.

JThe steering lock just pokes into a hole through the column body onto a machined groove on the column. It'll be absolutely fine without the steering lock, just make a cover for the hole put of a piece of tin wrapped around. There are quite a few threads around with details of how to put one back together, though.

Fantastic. Really like that high bumper

I could waffle on for ages, but your absolute best bet is watch some of the YouTubes that weld.com produce. That one I posted above goes through all the basics (including torch angle) and common beginner mistakes, so you'll probably have a few "ah ha" moments. What welding mask are you using - most importantly what shade? Sounds like you're having trouble seeing the weld pool.

As you're new to welding, I'd suggest doing the bare minimum on the bulkhead. The metal is half the thickness of the chassis, so double the chance of blowing holes and great potential for heat distortion on long runs on thin panels. Distortion on corners is pretty easy to control by comparison. As mentioned above: mock it up with some scrap plate first and practice the weld types and positions you'll have to do for real. Well done getting the chassis glued together effectively. Do post some pics of the welds if you'd like some constructive critique.