Morris Minor cabriolet

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The owner of this Morris Minor came to us asking for the engine to be set up as it was popping and coughing when it was warm. Little did we know that under the bonnet was a Fiat 131 1.6 16V engine running a race 4 to 1 exhaust manifold and twin 48 Webers. A quick check over revealed that there wasn't any coolant in the system, looking into it further there was a header tank that could be filled but no vent back up to allow the air out. We managed to pull the aluminium thermostat housing from the head and started to fill that, after about a liter of water was filled into the engine we noticed a wet patch starting to form on the floor. It turned out that the radiator had a tiny split in it. After a phone call to the owner to explain the situation and potential remedies it was decided to have a custom radiator made with a separate swirl pot to allow the cooling system to be filled and vented. A quick call to Darren at Radtec to find out the core sizes that they had available and I was then sat at the computer drawing up the radiator that I wanted along with the swirl pot that would work with the space that we had available. After a slightly longer wait than we wanted we had the call that everything was ready to pick up. It didn't all fit together as easily as I had hoped but it worked and fitted nicely in the engine bay. We can fill the coolant system and vent it without any issues. With the cooling system sorted we could get back to the original task of setting the carbs up. Using a carb balance meter and the rigid pipe (to listen to the air flow down each choke) the carbs were re-balanced and the idle reset. The car was bolted to the Dyno and the fueling checked and the jets altered to allow good acceleration and top end fueling. The car was put back together and handed back to the owner who has been out on numerous weekend runs in the car.