Update:
For a host of reasons I haven't got round to fabricating my header tank, but I have been making short trips in the Marlin. It seems that once the engine has worked hard climbing the numerous hills around here, it then refuses to start for about 30 minutes, once it has cooled it starts instantly and runs perfectly, pulling like a steam train and apparently without any vice.
Yesterday I chose a particularly hilly trip down narrow country lanes. At one point I had to stop for about 800 sheep to pass. I stopped the engine and immediately tried it but no go, it didn't even fire. A couple of minutes later once the sheep had passed I tried it on the starter again, but no go. As we were on a hill, I thought I would try bumping it off. I let the car roll a few yards and dropped the clutch in second, the engine started instantly! It didn't even spin over, it was instant power. We zoomed off. Later on my way back after a particularly steep climb, once we were over the summit I tried it again, in second gear, after a few yards, not more than walking pace, dropped the clutch and had an instant start with quite a hot (But not over-heating @ 80ºC.) engine.
This is beginning to make me lean away from fuel vaporisation towards PERHAPS a weak spark. I am using a 12 Volt coil and conventional (P5) old fashioned contact breakers.
I am thinking of trying a ballast resistor coil, perhaps without the resistor at first, just to prove or disprove the idea. If that does work, I may try the proper, original SD1 distributer, to see if that helps. I did try it right at the beginning when I had problems with the rev counter but once I realised the polarity for the rev counter was wrong and that was causing the problem, I re-fitted the old, points distributor.
I am hopefully a little nearer understanding what the issue is.
Other than that and a sad lack of ground clearance, it's going really well, great fun. A set of standard springs might be an idea...
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