Falling down a rabbit hole in the quest for knowledge

[Motown]

The electronic stepper autochoke is starting to play up on the SD1 and hasn't worked right for some time. To combat this from cold start i hold my foot slightly on the throttle pedal until the car warms up then its fine for the rest of the days driving but i would like to get it fixed. Problem is they are sealed unit and were set at factory and obviously BL and Rover are long gone. Ive contacted various companies who specialise in carburettor reconditioning but none of them wanted to take on the job due to the lack of available parts for the system or were simply unfamiliar with it.

A few years back I had the twin HIF SU carbs recondition and tuned by an absolute legend of a man by the name of Jim Parkes in Sheffield who's spent years in the trade and is still travelling around in his wee van tuning old cars. If i ever wanted my classic cars tuning or carbs reconditioning he was the man id go too but even he was unfamiliar with the stepper autochoke system.

I did think about fitting carbs from the Series 1 with the manual choke but this doesn't feel right as the car is fairly original in that it hasn't been messed around with or modified like lots of SD1s its also got low mileage and in fairly good condition for its age.

This evening i looked in the cars paperwork in the hopes of finding a solution i am lucky enough that i have the near full history of the car (which dates back to 1986 when it left the dealership) Just out of curiosity i looked up the original owners address on google maps to find the address has three Ford Capris sitting on the drive. (That cant be a coincidence surely) and i can also see the car was suffering from the same issue it has now when it was around 9 years old. In correspondence dated April 1995 from Joan M Ashdown of Greenways Engineering that the carbs and stepper system were recondition by Clive Rowland at a cost of £141 plus £6.50 postage. I still have the letters from Greenways Engineering to the then owner of the car relating to reconditioning including the one year warranty and the lifetime warranty in respect of labour only. I looked up Greenways Engineering on Google but couldn't find anything so i started typing the phone number and address from the letter in google and came up with this site... http://nemotors.atspace.com/NECarbs/Home.html 

It looks like N.E Carburettors (N.E Motors) bought out Greenways Engineering in 2001 when Clive Rowland retired due to ill health so i decided to email them but the email address no longer works and i am sat here thinking WHY! 1995 doesn't seem that long ago to me and surely that email address was active after 2001.... It was one of them weird moments were in your mind it doesn't feel like it was all that long ago 2001 seems like yesterday... Until i realised that letter was written 30 years ago and the website is atleast 24 years old Clive is probably long dead and i am a bitter old basterd..

Now clearly on abit of downer but not wanting to give up i went on companies house and found that N.E Carburettors (Neil Edgerley Motors) is still going strong and are at the same address as Greenways Engineering. Ive contacted them in the hopes they can offer a solution as they did back in 1995 if anyone is familiar with the businesses mentioned or the electronic stepper autochoke system please let me know.

Thanks 👍

[comfortablynumb]

IRC the stepper motor was fitted to many AR/BLcars, it was always a pain in the arse, even when it was new. I dealt with warranty claims through one of my jobs, the number replaced was ridiculous.

Is there any way of fitting a manual choke conversion? There were kits available readily for webers etc, with the amount of SU's fitted to vehicles I'd be amazed if there isn't, particularly since many of the older vehicles would have been manual choke .

This of course assumes that you're happy with a 'modification', although my V8 SD1 had a manual choke on it's su's, little lever job in the centre console.

[Motown]

15 hours ago, comfortablynumb said:

IRC the stepper motor was fitted to many AR/BLcars, it was always a pain in the arse, even when it was new. I dealt with warranty claims through one of my jobs, the number replaced was ridiculous.

Is there any way of fitting a manual choke conversion? There were kits available readily for webers etc, with the amount of SU's fitted to vehicles I'd be amazed if there isn't, particularly since many of the older vehicles would have been manual choke .

This of course assumes that you're happy with a 'modification', although my V8 SD1 had a manual choke on it's su's, little lever job in the centre console.

You can fit HS6 carbs from the series 1 with manual choke ive done this with other SD1s ive owned in the past but these cars had already been heavily modified or messed with in some way or another before my ownership so it didn't bother me.

This car is different as its mostly original all of its gadgets and features still work which is rare for an SD1 as i am sure you'll know if you've owned one before. I am very reluctant to rip things out or modify them id rather try and repair them first in an effort to keep the car as original as possible