You can run bike carbs, so long as you can keep all the emissions in check and provide a good burn through the revrange to avoid damage to the cat...

However, if you look at some of the production cars running carbs with CATS... You will run a mile and be kissing the feet of our lord EFI and singing the praises of closed loop management.

TT

Big yes to that!!

There is an alternative to injection though.

http://www.horrorphile.net/images/hangmans-noose.jpg

Bob:)

Lol I thought carbs where supposed to be better power/sound and injection just spread the power out across the rev range and gave you better fuel economy?

Anyhow got it apart and here's what I found...

Bit of water that had pooled and gone a bit rusty inside the cylinder 4 intake on the bike carb manifold...


I then got the whole manifold off and got a bit of oil leaking out head from where the channel comes down from the rocker area but no water (I'm guessing this is normal?). I also stuck my finger down the intake ports and only cyclinder 4 was wet. The water outlet behind port 4 at the back of the head was also strangely dry disproving my theory about water leaking out of here and down the intake 4??



The oil does seem to have spread/leaked across the bike carb manifold gasket although there was no signs of leakage out of the manifold

I then got the head off (note I didn't try to set it to TDC 1st as I wanted to see if there was water pooling at pot 4 which would be up at TDC, I'll reset later IF the engine isn't wrecked). Low and behold it was quite wet around cylinder 4 and there was water pooled in it :(


I had a good look at the gasket and this section here looks like the culprit although I can't understand how it could have rotted/ripped away like this and leaked out across the block surface and into cylinder 4 and then down into oilway into the sump?


I hopefully haven't wasted my time here but I had a go at cleaning up cylinder 4 with some wd40 and it came out pretty good I thought


please tell me its salvageable....

I still don't think it has leaked past cylinder 4, looks more like the water has passed from the water to the oil gallery.

Anyway. Pour in 1/2 a pint of water to cylinder 4 and see if it runs out. after that, warm it up to dry it.

TT

I agree, I don't think it has leaked past pot 4, just into it and by the looks of it almost gone up the intake to make the pool you could see in my 1st picture which makes sense as I had the front of the car jacked up and the seal clearly wasn't tight enough. So is it just a case of putting a new head gasket on it should be ok or will there have been permanent damage from the water getting into pot 4?

I think looking at that locating dowel in the head <which should be in the block x2) is the problem. It looks to me like you have munched the head down on the dowels and not got the head seated on the block before tightening.That dowel should have been half in the head and half in the block, to me it looks like due to misallignment the head gasket has never seated.

Bob

Is that the correct gasket? some of the holes dont line up and are of different shape on one of the pics

I'm not sure to be honest, it's what my local motor factor sold me by looking up the donor's reg. I'm sure he said it was for a 1.8i cvh which I took to be 1.8 CFi and it came as a set with inlet & exhaust manifold which seemed to line up ok.

To be honest I'm not too worried about the Q plate. It's more using a pre 95 engine to go thru IVA to set my emission requirements quite high so that I can swap to a modern zetec afterwards without having to run a cat etc to meet lower emission requirements.