Fixing the fuel tank

Thanks for sharing your experience Cobba, it will be a most helpful reference for future projects.

Yes, I am pleased with the end result and yes, I did follow the destructions to the letter which usually makes for a good result. I did manage to damge the paint on the tank when the bloody wind blew it off the bench when I went for a piss. SO I do have paint left over and it will take very little to prep the tank again so I will do that soon. In the mean time I have partly made a locking nut for the top link arm. This arm has an adjustable turnbuckle set up on it to make adjustments of the implements fitted but, it has a habbit of unwinding when travelling over bumpy dirt tracks when doing a trek. This same arm has a safety device that is suppose to have a cable run from a spring loaded part so if you get hooked up on something it pulls the cable and this disengages the clutch. So I have made the ring and bored it to the correct ID, drilled 3 holes equally around the outside for some handles to be welded to and I bought a 2nd hand
1 1/4" BSF tap to male the thread. Once made this will be painted with the tank. I ended up maling this for under $5.00 of steel and bought the tap for $25.00 delivered. To buy a nut the same size was going to be $60.00 + so I had the fun of making it and learnt another skill on the lathe using a boring bar. I will stick some pics up soon of thi new part.

Cobbadog,
The saying "Pissing into the wind" comes to mind. At least you were not doing that.
In my very limited knowledge of tractors, I have seen a steel bar hanging loosely through a hole in the adjustable turnbuckle. The idea is that the weight of it hanging off the turnbuckle prevents it from turning by itself but is easy for you to turn.

The saga continues.
After spending all the care in cleaning and sealing the tank successfully I still have issues. It was running like a shaggy dog, back firing at times and revs hunting up and down. Fairly sure fuel starvation and found a couple of things, poor fuel flow to the carby which turned out to be a small flake of rust inside the tap. Then checked the carby and thought that the needle and seat were sticking and this is a late model version fitted before I owned the tractor but the needle has the soft neophrine tip but it also has a spring that holds the needle in place and cannot fall out. Just by trying to blow air through the inlet with the needle facing down as it does it took a lot of effort to get the spring to release and allow air to blow through. So I unhooked the spring and did a trial fit and shook the carby to see if the needle fell out and it did not so I tried that. Still mucking up so I put the spring back on. Back to the tap and this time when I took the tap apart the cork gasket was badly worn and actually broke in half so went hunting for a replacement. None local so order from Bundy Bear in Qld but not to suit a David Brown but rather a TEA20 that required a modification. It was suppose to arrive last week and didn't so when it did show up I had to enlarge the centre hole for the tap pivot shaft and then reduce the OD of the round section to fit the tap body using a stanley knife and careful to leave the 2 ears on the gasket that located all 4 holes for fuel flow. All sorted there and back together again and a trial, still same shit, different day. Still checking and re chcking parts and found a slight blockage in the tap handle. I never looked at how fuel got from the holes from top to bottom and it is via the tap handle. 2 holes drilled at an angle so they meet up and inside there was not blocked but not as clear as you want it. NOw cleaned out and a good flow of fuel all the way to the carby so now my confidence is rising. Started up and ran it for a short while just above idle then slowly increased revs a bit at a time and let it run until I was above half throttle and it back fired and starved for fuel so knocked the revs back and it slowly recovered. Gave the carby a tap with the spanner and opened up the throttle to full and it ran for a short time and started to starve again. So it appears I now am having issues with the needle and seat. So tomorrow after work the carby is off again, remove the spring and see if that helps. Also while it is out I will check measure the seat section for size, tpi and diameter and if removing the spring doesn't help I can then search for a new one locally first but if no luck one out of the UK on one of those slow boats from china.
It sure is testing my patience and I am really hoping that this will aloow it to run nicely again as we want to take him to the Taree Show this Saturday. If no luck we will take Dees' HRH Sarah Ferguson again.

Im not the smartest joker on this wide brown land so maybe ignore everything Im saying

I reckon one of squeeze type sauce bottles can help fault find a lot of problems

If it was mine I would have a sauce bottle of fuel in a bit of hose feeding straight to the carby

If it still runs like crap you know the fuel supply to the carby isnt the problem

Hook the fuel back up with it running this time, when it starts running like crap squirt some go juice straight down the barrel if it improves you know its a fuel problem

If it's still crap you know its something else, maybe a vacuum leak opening up as it warms up

I was taught many years ago to always prove its a problem before changing stuff

Paul

After all your work on the fuel tank I was worried the problem was there.

Keep at it you'll win eventually.

Hi Cobb’s
Just thinking outside the square my Austin loadstar was stuffing around a while ago something similar couldn’t find anything with fuel supply after much fiddling and tearing out of hair went looking elsewhere and ended up new points and condenser sorted it out
All symptoms pointed to fuel missing and backfireing at above idle or under load worse as it warned up ran allright when cool

Bluey

Shifted wrong post.

Now this is where I got to. Last Friday Oliver52 rang me and offered the loan of a known good carby from one of his Cropmatsers. As much as it goes against my grain to strip something that is perfectly good I took him up on his very generous and very nuch appreciated offer. While there I also borrowed a second carby from one that may not be on the parade ground again for quite some time.
Armed with 2 solutions I finished work and went home to do the swap only to find that the fuel line on mine is a larger fitting that the 2 I borrowed. No kidding, didn't it make me feel like crap. So plan B was to remove the needle and seat from the worse carby and try it. Almost instant fix with it running so much better but had a tendancy to flood if I stopped the engine so that was an easy thing to get over by switching off the fuel which is what I usually do anyway. Still had issues with it being rich in the fuel mixture but I tend to put that to the slight possible flooding. So my next attempt is once again fit my needle n seat without the spring and try that. If that fails a new needle and seat will be sourced and fitted and go from there.

The only way of adjusting the float level on this carby is to use a washer or 2 and fit it under the needle n seat where it screws into the housing at the top of the bowl.
Does anyone have any tips on a supplier of carby parts for a Solex 30FV please? Would rather but it locally if possible.

Then I can return the carbies I have borrowed and re fit them in place where they belong.

IF I am still having issues I will go back to the other side of the engine and double check all the electrics from plugs, HT leads and thier connections, rotor button, points, condensor and coil until I sort this bastard out.

I think I'm going to have to write a book on this bastard. Once the tank was sorted I then discovered a cork gasket on the 2 way fuel tap was well passed the use by date so I had to order one from a TED20 and cut it down to suit the Cropmaster. With that done I then had trouble with fuel starvation then flooding and all this without touching the needle and seat. So slowly going through all the possibilities, I found a small bit of cork inside the tap handle and this seemed to sort out the flow. Then needle and seat issues. This had been replaced and the new one had a small spring on it so when it is fitted and sitting in the carby it sits upside down and stops the needle falling out. It seemed that the spring was holding the needle half closed so would flood when at low revs and starve at full throttle. So the spring went into the spare parts department and it now works fine. Next the engine was running way too rich by blowing black smoke up the chimney. Stripped the carby again and found no issues inside and all was clean and clear. All ports, jets and galleries are crystal clear. Something I noticed with the air mixture (bleed screw by the Pommies) was that no matter what position I put it there was no difference to the way it ran. The air mixture screw can be reversed on this Solex FV 30 carby meaning that I can take it out and feed it in from the opposite side and the small blanking plug can be swapped over as well, but this would make it hard to get to to adjust it. In the pic below you can see the top and bottom of the carby. You can clearly the mixture screw and where it runs. It goes through the first hole then the second larger one and finishes in the 3rd hole. It is in the 3rd hole where the taper is and is suppose to meter the air flow. All of these have been checked and cleaned and can see no reason why there is a problem here, but there is.
Todays episode after making all new copper cored HT leads and ends plus the coil lead and measured them on the multimeter and got all 00.00 from the spark plug end to the brass post in the cap so these are good. All new plugs went in and yesterday when I started it there was back firing so I shut it down, walked away and if I were a drunking bloke I would be just that. Re-check my handy work today and found #1 & 2 were arse about face so that sorted the back firing. Still have this running too rich issue and so that brought me back to the carby again.
So as I had the engine running I did the adjustments as described in the manual. Start it up with the screw all the way in and work outwards towards being around 1 1/2 turns out the basic setting for most carbies. Made no difference at all so I kept winding it out a 1/4 of turn at a time and waited, no change. It was not until I had the engine running and the mixture screw completely out of the carby that engine started to run smooth again. Poked the screw back into th hole and not very far and it started running rough again.

Any clues for this ol dog?