AC Dodd tuning – My Midas's

This last weekend I organised a tuning weekend with AC Dodd the SU and A series tuning expert.

The weekend ended up being for a collection of Mini’s, two Minor’s and my Midas. Prior to Adrian starting on my car I measured the resistance of the plug leads and was shocked to find that they were 47k whereas around 1.5k is what is recommended. I had a set of new MiniSpares leads and measured the resistance of those and found that they were 5K and so I got a set of Powerspark leads from Adrian and fitted those with a set of NGK BP7ES plugs to replace the Bosch ones that were fitted. As I have a points ignition system I gapped these at 25 thou.

Then on to Adrian’s tuning of my car, he adjusted the timing as with the non-vacuum Aldon distributor the timing was out and also it had a far from ideal curve. On analysing the mixture it was found that the engine wasn’t getting enough air through the pancake air filter and so I removed the element to try without it and we found that the frame of the air filter had been incorrectly fitted and was partially covering the carburettor inlet. Needless to say this was removed and went in the bin to be replaced with a better one since ordered from MiniSpares. Adrian then modified an RI needle to suit my engine and it ended up looking more like a sewing needle, a new yellow spring was also fitted. This is the result before a test drive.

The performance of the car after this was nothing short of stunning and proved that the specification of the engine, I had been told when I bought the car, was correct.

I now need to remove the fancy oil catch tank, that hasn’t caught any oil so far in my use of the car. I then need to resite the fuel pressure regulator so I can fit a larger better air filter. Finally I am awaiting a specially recurved distributor from Adrian to put the icing on the cake.

It was a really interesting weekend and everything that Adrian says on his YouTube videos was born out, a large number of the cars had incorrect spark plugs or they were wrongly gapped and a lot needed new ignition leads. Also what type of needle worked with one car did not work with another of the same engine specification. A surprise was one of the Morris Minors from 1963 which still had its original coil, plug leads and distributor cap it needed very little tuning to get it really singing.