Fuel tap (solenoid valve)
Posted: 04 May 2016 09:43
Well these Morinis certainly like to come up with a new problem every day! I was just returning from a test ride yesterday (the only kind of ride I do!) and I was thinking that I am getting somewhere at last - when the engine started to misfire and then stopped. On the dual carriageway. My first thought was that the fault I've been chasing has now gone hard, probably a good thing apart from the inconvenience of pushing it home. Then I thought it felt a lot like fuel starvation so I turned on the reserve, counted 20 and pressed the button - it started immediately. Well I rode straight home but knowing that there was plenty of fuel in the tank, it had to be a problem with the solenoid fuel valve. Ironically, this is a feature I really like!
I'll cut the story short, stripping the valve it looks like this:
The little black dot in the middle is the rubber seal which should be on the end of the solenoid plunger, but it's perished and fallen off. How to fix it?
Well I needed something impervious to modern petrol, so I thought of the viton tip from an Amal float needle, it's about the right size:
The triangular section of it also lends itself to putting it in a 3 jaw chuck:
So I drilled it, cut the end off and stuck in on the plunger using JB Weld (impervious to petrol) like this:
It works perfectly, I hope this is useful to someone else!
I'll cut the story short, stripping the valve it looks like this:
The little black dot in the middle is the rubber seal which should be on the end of the solenoid plunger, but it's perished and fallen off. How to fix it?
Well I needed something impervious to modern petrol, so I thought of the viton tip from an Amal float needle, it's about the right size:
The triangular section of it also lends itself to putting it in a 3 jaw chuck:
So I drilled it, cut the end off and stuck in on the plunger using JB Weld (impervious to petrol) like this:
It works perfectly, I hope this is useful to someone else!