Thank you all for the welcome. It's a long story going back nearly years to shortly after I had the car. In a nutshell, when I first fitted the carbs, they worked tolerably but I cleaned them out and really carefully set the float height, pump volumes and other stuff. I'd already noticed that the float height gap was much less than the roughly 14-15mm often specified (can't remember exactly what but may have been half this amount). I made other changes too like Viton needles. Running from that point on was really poor (pick up off idle and progression) but other life things things took over. Now 17 years later I want to sell the car as its too difficult to get into, harder to get out of and underneath and I can't get my head into a small footwell on my back. I'll post a full description of my set-up and other stuff like fuel pressure and how my DHLA45s worked and what I think I've found here in a new thread in the right place. Best, Peter I'll also edit my profile/sig, if I can, to expose my name.

Doh, thank you Roger. Should have six 0s behind it  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft)  

It would John. And I have in the past set one up in the garage. There are "issues" however in doing so. Mainly the area with access to the extract fan is a bit congested, the whole garage is a bit congested with CF parts, etc. And getting something set-up there is a fairly significant undertaking. And because of the overall size and awkwardness of the bits getting painted it would have required a good bit of space. And at the end of the day, the paint dust just joined all the other filler dust that had escaped the vacuum system over the last year or so of pattern and mould making for the bonnet. So really needed a deep clean regardless. But yes, pain in the bum...

Hi Mudhut  Had a quick look on Face-ache. No Dave Sideways, just a Dave Sidewayz that looks rather like a bot.

Welcome, mudhut! (we'd love to have a real name to call you by!) Dave was on Facebook a while ago - can't say recently, as I was hacked off that site and am not going back.    He wasn't posting about car related things, but might be willing to give  advice.     John

Greetings - and welcome to the forum. Yes, you would be correct about the name match. Dave was very much the carb specialist back then. Unfortunately, though this forum, which he started, retains the "Sideways" name, for various reasons Dave is no longer active here and not, as far as I know active in the carbs game either. However, it's still worth a go at posting up details of your challenges as we do have others (not me!) with some carb expertise on here, though possibly not at Dave's level. I take it you've already found the basic setup info here? There may be more information more specific to your problem in that area of the forum too, but it's fairly quiet in there these days!

Good afternoon to all. I seem to remember a Dave Sideways from eBay in the earlyish 2000's doing Weber or DellOrto. There can't be more than one, I'm sure. I had a Vitesse 6 in the mid 1970's and loved it to bits until a rather large lump in the road in Brittany broke the corner of the diff case off while somewhat overloaded five-up. Fixed overnight somewhere in the back end of beyond of France between Xmas and New Year 1975. Hypothermia. Car now long gone. These days, I'm more interested in getting my Lancia 2-litre twin cam engined kit car running properly on the DHLA40H carbs that I have for it. It's been a miserable experience so far. I'll post on the correct forum in a day or so when I've gathered all the carb and engine data.

About a month back we were on the M25 heading north from Surrey back to the M40 at night. At one point I noticed ahead of us the gantries were lit but I couldn't make out the speeds until we got nearer to the A30 junction. The 2 exiting lanes were NSL, lane 1 was 60, lane 2 was 30, lane 3 was 50 and lane 4 blank. WTAF I said to SWMBO, she shrugged as well as we were in lane 3 we stuck to 50. A mile down the road all gantries were blank so we popped up to NSL speed and both spent the next 10 mins discussing/wondering was I right? She said I was wrong because there was no NSL "release" circles but I thought I was right. No brown envelops in the post at 30+ days, so guess  was right. Based on the lit gantries we both agreed the Motorway control desk was either sniffing glue or asleep...!

I know I( am being pedantic but your cost of 750 Euros looks like a bargain    Should it have a few 000's behind it.      Roger

Problem with Femi's question is that it was essentially a throwaway line, if indeed he ever actually said it, as there is some doubt about this. And it is now almost become a trope pretending to be a deep philosophical query. Much the same as the Drake equation - principally the last four terms are at present completely unknown. Drake et al made an 'educated guess' based on 1960s knowledge, before anyone had gone into space, before we had sent any spacecraft to any planet, when we still thought there were nine planets in the solar system, when the only observations of the universe we from earth based telescopes, before we had discovered pulsars and THIRTY years before we even found one exoplanet. And critically before we had the observational data and computational capacity to actually work out how our own solar system formed. How we ended up with small rocky planets in the inner solar system and large gas giants in the outer. Almost even before we had accurate dating of the age of the earth itself. In essence then, and even with current knowledge (ie largely pre- full Gaia data analysis) the value of N is basically a complete guess and you can make the answer what you want. Precision calculation based on guesswork is still just guesswork. Like putting lots of numbers after the decimal point. It just looks like it's meaningful rather than actually the bollocks it is. Gaia cost about 750 Euros, for construction, launch and mission support, shared amongst the participants of ESA. Sounds like a lot of money but works out at a little over one days cost of the NHS. One day. As for the value, aside from the knowledge and the abstract concept of human endeavour, art, etc there is the learning, development and maintenance and importantly an enabler of a very high skill base which is applicable and absolutely vital to everything in modern life.  One of of the causes for the the septic isle that vexes you (and us) so much is that since WW2 each time Britain has been faced by an economic pinch the decision has been taken to cut a bit more R&D, advanced manufacture, etc so that the (relatively trivial) sums of money can be diverted to proping up outdated and uncompetetive industry or ever wider social support for a growing non-productive propostion of the population. Looks fab in the short run and is certainly a vote winner for the masses but in the long run it creates the septic isle you despise and destroys the economic base that pays for the social support and pretty much everything else. Interestingly one of the reasons posited for us not finding advanced civilisations in the universe is that basically they could have developed but decided that they couldn't be bothered. Much 'easier' to spend on short term 'politically expediant' activities rather than on researching stuff with no obvious (to the generally stupid electorate and elected) immediate benefit. And so they never got beyond the planet and died out. Actually the issue is energy. Human development and living standards/GDP whatever is almost directly correlated to energy availability. World energy use has increased tenfold over the last one hundred years and 30 fold since 1800. Basically given enough energy we can develop technology to do pretty much anything we want (within the parameters of physics). This could include sub-light travel to earth-like exoplanets. It's difficult for modern populations with there almost sole focus on the immediate presence to contemplate anything that might take 100 years or so to accomplish. But in reality it's not really that much different to the vision required to build a medieval cathedral. Bloody right Roger. But it's always a good excuse to do nothing. And moan about the 'waste of money'.