An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

Greg Nichols selected some colour co-ordinated belts to be as inconspicuous as possible.

[jack neville]

Another area of attention was the air filter mount.
The Tilly should have a Solex carburetor but we only have one which will go in the second Tilly. We have several SU carbys of which one has been rebuilt for this engine. The carby is mounted at 90 degrees to the inlet manifold and has an air tube that bolts to a solid steel mount and has the air filter mounted on top. The solex carby being smaller means to have a similar appearance using an SU carby required a facsimile air tube to be made slightly larger. Easiest way to explain is to show the end product compared with the original set up.

[jack neville]

The air tube was conveniently similar in size to a 65 x 35mm tube so it was a simple matter of forming up the bend and added mounting tubes and shaping the mounting bolt anchors. The mounting plate being a cast piece I made by laminating a couple of 8mm pieces together and cutting and grinding it to shape.

[jack neville]

The other thing we decided to do was ditch the oil bath filter in favour of a paper element. Once the oil bath setup was gutted it was a simple matter of measuring up to find s suitable paper element.

[jack neville]

To compare the SU set up with the Solex original.

[jack neville]

How do I know what the Solex set up should look like?
Well last week I did a lighting trip (four days, 3500km) to pick up this little dude. He will be a thread of his own but being so original and complete, should be a simpler story than this Tilly but is already providing a wealth of genuine original and more importantly very accurate data.

[jack neville]

The new addition would appear so far to be one of the most intact and original Morris Tilly's discovered. I will start a separate thread but we were very pleased to find it had an intact and original fuel cap cover. We did have the remains of two covers but no idea of what the latch entailed as both had broken pieces remaining and photos of fuel caps are as expected non existent or very blurry.