V4 now V8 again!

This morning I had a ring around my various Land Rover gurus, who were as stumped as I was, except for:  Kevin Winn, who built the truck, whose gut instinct was that it was the fuelling;  and Paul Bass from Challenger 4x4, who immediately said "it's a carburettor problem".  What he knew, and I didn't realise, was that the carbs don't each supply one bank of cylinders.  The inlet manifold crosses over, so one carb supplies cylinder 1, 4, 6 and 7, and the other supplies 2, 3, 5 and 8.  And guess which ones weren't working?  1, 4, 6 and 7…

 

This was one of those DOH! moments.

 

Roy and I had a look and sure enough, the left carb wasn't working, although fuel was reaching it.  We cleaned it out, checked it over and rebalanced both carbs the best we could, and immediately could tell the difference.  Now it's all hunky dory.  This is great news, as we can now press south.

 

If I'm honest, part of the problem was that when I reset the carbs after the MOT, I don't think I did a perfect job of it.  Once the quality of the petrol went downhill, and I suspect there was probably a bit of crud in the carb too, it was enough to knock it all off.

 

We're now packing up before heading south again.  This is a big relief.  And as Roy pointed out, I now know a lot more about the ignition system than I did before!

 

A huge thanks to Paul for pointing out what should have been obvious, but had stumped me for two days.  I should have listened to the Dutch guy in the Toyota next door (after all, he was driving a Toyota, so has a lot of common sense) when he said it wouldn't be something complicated, look for the simple answer.