I just bought on Saturday a 67 Austin Healey Sprite MKIV with a 1098 motor. The previous owner spared no expense with a Malory dual point distributor and a Weber 40 DCOE 151 carb. The cap and wires are old, I've got a new set on order, I put new plugs in yesterday and they are already covered in soot. With the choke all the way out the engine will fire right off. The idle is a little rough, but not horrible. The car has an electric fuel pump that seems to be doing just fine at pumping clean gas from the new gas tank. As the engine comes up to temperature, I can ease off on the choke, but not all the way. If I give it any gas without closing the choke back down at the same time, the engine will die. I can increase the engine speed slowly working the choke closed and throttle open, but it will backfire through the carb occasionally if I do. I haven't yet confirmed the valve timing with the timing chain cover off, but with the rocker cover off it seems to make sense. I have looked at the distributor closely with #1 and TDC and the points are just opening. I did this basic static timing, but can't find the scale on the crank to set the timing with the light. I thought it should be close enough to get some kind of runability out of the engine, but no, still dies when I give it any gas at all. I'm thinking that the engine is getting too much gas and that I should change the carb jets to smaller jets. But that's my best guess. I'm going to pick up a book on webers tomorrow, that might shed some light on things. The jet thing is just my best next guess. Other things on the table are:
New Coil, and points. Distributor cap, rotor and plug wires.
I also noticed what I thought was a lot of play in the distributor shaft. Which begs the question, what is too much play in the distributor shaft?
Also, where should the scale for timing adjustment be on this engine?
I'm pretty lost with this one........HELP !!!!!