Starting - petrol

[DaveH]

Thought I'd start early before the crowds get here..
After it's stood for a few days, my 2.25 petrol takes a bit of cranking before it fires up, then runs fine and will start on the first turn. Feels like it's not getting fuel until pumped through? Is there a non-return valve in the pump, or other ideas what might cause?

Thanks to the team for setting up the Forum.

[LMM944]

One of mine does that. If left for more than 2 or 3 days I have to manually pump the fuel pump.
The only difference between the the two of them is that one has a Weber carb and the other a Zenith.
The Zenith has a bigger float chamber, hence a larger amount of fuel, leads me to think that either the fuel evaporates to the extent that the Weber won’t pick the fuel up or it syphons back slightly.
The Zenith equipped car will start almost instantly even if left for a couple of weeks.

[Neil Bymouth]

What carburettor do you have?
Many years ago I got fed up with the cheap glass bowl variety of lift pumps so I rang a main dealer and gave them the part number. When I went to collect it it was completely different. I was told that the original type was nla from Land Rover and this was a conversion kit. It came with new unions and pipework and it's a Tdi pump. It works perfectly ok and I thought I'd better get a spare recently. Craddocks didn't have a genuine one as they're nla now but Britpart do the same Tdi style pump as a conversion kit.

[Neil Bymouth]

Daft question maybe but I'll ask it anyway.
Is the choke flap working correctly and closing fully?

[Teacher]

My S2 on a solex does this. The temporary solution has been to manually pump it under the bonnet.

I have just bought a cheap ish electric pump and have a button which I will use purely for priming. I’ve not yet decided whether to put it in series or parallel with the manual one. I think it’ll go in series to start with and see how it goes.

[Neil Bymouth]

Years ago BFS did an electric pump kit for Series. It did away with the mechanical pump. On Series 3's the pump was mounted on the bulkhead left of the heater matrix looking from the driver's side.

[DaveH]

Daft question maybe but I'll ask it anyway.
Is the choke flap working correctly and closing fully?

Turns out not daft at all... Found the choke cable had a bit of a bend near the carb, so wasn't fully pulling through. Has started first hit since I've straightened it. Cheers!