Unfortunately I left the rear passenger caliper off the disc when I connected the eezibleed so the piston popped out and fluid everywhere. Whoops!
Reassembled and had to start all over again with the bleeding. I put about 5 litres (the same litre, 5 times!) through the rear brakes before I got rid of all the trapped air, it takes a long long time!
I was a bit concerned that the brakes didn't feel the same as in our "normal" car and got some advice of the cobraclub forum, the pedal should go hard after a few pumps with the engine off but this wasn;t the case on the cobra. There's a non-return valve from the servo to the inlet manifold and I was advised to check this was the right way round. I was pretty sure of this but I had a look anyway, turns out out the jubilee clip on the hose wasn't done up so I think I had a vacuum leak. Nipped it up, finished the brakes off and started the car, would you believe it's now a lot smoother! Here's the offending bit of hose coming from the brake servo:
I had my friend Max round and we went for a drive to warm it up before having a play with the idle mixture and immediately it was obvious the car was running a lot better. It still bucks a bit but now only below about 1800 revs whereas before anything below 2200 it was kicking and surging. We had it cruising at 1800rpm in 5th nice and steady. I had a quick refresher in carb operation from Max, at normal road speeds to maintain 50 or 60mph in 5th is such a small throttle opening its completely dominated by the idle circuit.
We checked the idle mixture after our warm-up drive and couldn't get it any better than the settings I already had but we surmised that it needed a few miles for the plugs to clean up after probably being fouled by the previous mega-rich mixture before the performance would improve. My last vacuum reading was 11in.hg and the needle was waving around almost +/- 1in.hg. After disconnecting and reconnecting all the vacuum hoses, it now read about 11.5 and was just bobbing gently +/- 0.25in.hg. Much, much smoother!
Another quick job, we checked the timing. I knew it was at about 32deg all-in (3000rpm) but I wanted to know for reference what the idle timing was, its 14deg. The car won't start with any more initial advance, it kicks back against the starter.
So, the engine is running a lot better, not quite perfect as I'm sure it could be smoother at really low revs but smooth running down to 1800 is good enough for now, at least now I can do 30 in 3rd, 40 in 4th and not get thrown out of my seat.
Going back to the original topic, the brakes are now unbelievably good. The first mile or so of our initial warm-up drive were down a very quiet dead end back road where I did some hard stops to check braking performance. It will quite happily lock the front wheels from 50mph with a good hard stab at the pedal, the front right locked first but I expect a tweak to tyre pressure will balance things out. I've never had a car with such good brakes so its going to take some getting used to but my collarbones hurt from pulling against the harness!
All in all, a very good day, saw a few other nice cars around, corvette c5 gave us a thumbs up, saw a very nice Aston DB6 at the petrol station, had a brief chat with the owner. I think I saw an exige pass the other way but he was driving quite *ahem* enthusiastically (and so were we!) so it was a very brief meeting.
Also, the roads were dry enough to get a fair bit of full throttle and finally managed to get up to proper operating temp. Oil was just over 90deg instead of the 80odd that I was all I managed in the ice/frost, managed to get the exhausts properly hot for the first time too, passenger side was popping a bit on the overrun so it may still be a tiny tiny bit rich on that side.
Also also, may have set another car alarm off simply by driving by hehe : )
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