|
Today was Metro day at my house. I primed and painted the replacement hood and fenders of my daily driver 92 convertible. While waiting between coats, I changed the oil and filter on the Blue 93 and messed with the Diesel 1990 Metro. Its fuse block is all corroded but the basics work. I took it for a drive with the 2 fuel lines running thru the firewall to a plastic 1 gallon fuel jug on the passenger floor filled with #2 diesel (no bio diesel yet). I got 66 miles on that one gallon. Most of the driving was 35 to 55 mph in low rolling hills and flat areas.
I have the torque limiter control closed down to keep the smoke down. There is still an occasional puff of smoke but not anything like the cloud it left behind on its original test trip.
I have no tachometer yet but will try to make a 3 lobe cam with a set of old Chevy points to make the stock tach work through the old ignition coil. I will bolt this to the front of the engine cam drive cover. How nice of Kubota to leave me a cover plate, 2 bolt holes, and a nice slot drive in the end of the cam (probably for a mechanical tachometer). It would be really nice to have some rpm data to adjust the governor and injection pump.
The good news...it ran fine and gave me 66mpg. The bad news...it is really too gutless to be driving on the freeway as is. I believe I can squeeze more power out of it by installing the centrifugal injection advancer mechanism and more carefully setting the torque (fuel) limiter stop. I keep eyeballing that turbo sitting on my shelf.....
|