Solex 26FV

[Howard Wright]

Hi All

I'm getting way ahead of myself with my new special build (not even got the chassis together yet!) but I've been browsing potential carburettors.

I want to avoid a fuel pump if possible and get the carb well within the body line so SU and other side draughts may be problematic (especially as I hope to use the car for trials!). I have a "bunch of bananas" exhaust manifold and understand that an upside down Barlow inlet will allow me to use an up draught carburettor. 

Solex 30 Mov are like hen'd teeth and ££££ and would be a bit o.t.t. for the mild tune I had in mind.

So has anyone experience of using the Solex 26FV?  There seem to be lots of parts available and a they come up frequently on auction sites.  The source book shows what looks like one being used on the Dixi.

Cheers

Howard

[Greig Smith]

Howard are you planning to run a scuttle tank for gravity feed or a rear mounted tank with a electric pump to dispense with the block mounted fuel pump or are you wanting to go with a rear mounted tank driven by air pressure ?? It really takes very little air pressure to keep the fuel flowing from a rear mounted tank - 2 or 3 pumps on my supercharged race car and I can complete a full throttle hill climb or 1.9kms plus the 2.0 kms return run and the air pressure needle has hardly moved off 3lbs

There is no reason why you cannot run an SU inside the bonnet sides on a special, you would need a tight Y piece with an equally tight horizontal curve facing backwards and place the SU near the firewall. Cable actuation would eliminate any throttle linkage issues. 

This is the branch I made for my supercharged special, OK the inlet Y is long as I needed to get to the level of the blower feed pipe from the nose, but if your branches go down, your Y can come out sideways quite tightly and the tail can curve like mine. A suitable carb flange & a phenolic block & you're done. I bought 8 or 10 pre-made bends from my local exhaust shop and sliced them up accordingly. Tacked them to a lazer cut flange & had my engineering friend complete with welding with a TiG welder as my MiG deposits too much metal wire on tiny flanges.

Aye
Greig

[Terrytuned]

Howard with a down draught manifold mounted upside down and a 90degree elbow you can fit an SU carb facing forward or to the rear keeps every thing inside the body line and no problem with gravity fuel feed.
Terry.

[Bob Culver]

Hi Greig

What is thinking behind the unconvrntional pairing of successive exhausts?

[Greig Smith]

I copied it off another A7 race car, ideally it should have been 1+4 & 2+3... you live & learn...

One day if I feel so inclined I'll make another one, but for now the car goes well and as I've carefully trimmed the bonnet to suit these pipes, I'd have to rework that as well....

Aye
G

[Howard Wright]

Hi Both!

Thanks for the responses.

I plan a gravity fed tank (Chummy) but hadn't realised that an SU could be mounted under an exhaust manifold with longer pipework.  

If the pipework is to be longer and go through several bends would a slightly larger SU be appropriate?  Say an 1 1/4" which are readily available!

Cheers

Howard

[Chris KC]

A 1.25" SU can be made to go very nicely indeed

[Greig Smith]

1 1/4 as a single is perfect, for twin carbs you ideally want 1 1/8ths as years ago Dad found the 1 size up tends to over feed things a bit unless your set up is perfect - Overfeeding your 7 will make it fat & an overweight trials 7 tends to trail behind <grin>

Howard - if your bunch of exhaust banana's goes down, you can make your intake manifold horizontal or even up - the opposite of mine above

Aye
Greig