warning for any one with twin hs6/8 carbs

[simon4253]

I recently had a friend,s very pretty, rust free(south african import) series 2 to tune and fettle after a long lay up. It had been mot'd but ran rough at idle and handled "interestingly". someone had removed the overflow pipes from the carbs and when the front one flooded due to dirt in the float bowl it overflowed straight on to the distributor! the resulting fire resulted in some very fast movements to extinguish followed by a few hours replacing the carbs, distributor,coil and engine wiring loom! luckily I had all these bits and have used hif carbs with central lowdown overflow which copes better with infrequent use and lack of maintenance which this particular car suffers! The owner does like it but knows nothing about cars and usually phones when something is wrong! anyway do check the existence and condition of your overflow pipes occasionally as the result is shocking and time consuming to rectify at best!