Pesky carburetor to manifold nut!

[George]

Hello all!

So today I set about removing the Zenith carburetors and 2 very bothersome nuts really gave me trouble!

As you can see from the photo, both nuts are so close to the manifold. The nut on the left was easy to remove because of the space to its left. The nut on the right, however, is so close to the manifold on both sides of it that it was impossible to get the chunky spanner anywhere near it. There's the same problem on the other carburetor with one bolt being accessible and the other too close to the manifold.

I spent the day trying to find Whitworth spanners that were narrow with minimal excess metal around the jaw gap, because I found one of my skinny metric spanners managed to fit fine but obviously wasn't the correct size to turn the nut.

In the end, the nut came off with a bit of light persuasion from a set of pliers. The nut must have been done up as tight as possible by whoever last had it off, but clearly they couldn't get a spanner in to appropriately tighten it up.

Has anyone got any suggestions what I could use to tighten it back up in future? It seems a very poor design that the nuts would have been put that close to the manifold making it so difficult to access

[bitsobrits]

I would be inclined to drill/tap the manifold for helicoil inserts so no nut was required.

[ColinB]

There is a similar problem on Series One Land Rovers. Many owners modify a spanner to fit by bending it with heat to help get it into position and grinding off some of the meat so it can turn.

[George]

Thanks both for the advice.

As I found yesterday that one of my metric spanners with less "meat" around the jaw fitted in the gap, I too thought that grinding down the spanner would be a good starting place.

Fortunately I've found and purchased this spanner on ebay which is the correct size AND has already been ground down which only cost £3. I'm hopeful this will be sufficient but if not then perhaps Steve's approach will need to be considered.

Thanks again both!

[telco.2]

Difficult!! Brass nuts on a manifold are the best idea. I've not had a problem since swapping over from steel

[Danish]

Hi, here is the little I know. I have chassis 45062, registered one week after the motor show in '32/ 1st week in November. KV2644 was chassis no. 45001 registered in 23.09.32. Highly probably that your car also had a KV number. If I can recall correctly, the public announcement of the 9 Sports in the Autocar Magazine (October) prior to the Motor Show featured an artist's illustration of the car; a side view with a vent on the scuttle and interestingly several groupings of bonnet vents and also Junior type side lights on the helmet wings.

[George]

Thanks for the info David, I've just uploaded the factory card images to the other topic on here. I believe the "TV" registration plate was probably original as this matches the delivery location of Nottingham.