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[bindog]

Hey All Ok. so firstly, I'm out in south africa... I am pulling our 1975 1100 Clubman out of storage after not being run for probably 9 years. The car is in pretty good shape, some minor rust, never been in an accident. At some stage my folks lent the car to a friend, and they overheated the motor. As far as I can fathom after many questions, the block was replaced with a 1275 block, and the car ran after that happily for years. In fact, the car was used on various occasions after not being used for years, and it started up with minor effort... I am now in a position to get the car out of storage and rebuild the car back to mint condition... but the car wont start... I know at some stage someone wanted to buy the car ( who apparently was really good with minis - whatever) but the car wouldnt start. They clearly fiddled around a lot to try and get it going with no success... I have done the following so far... New plugs - gapped to 0.8mm New rotor New coil Fresh LRP fuel Fuses checked New battery and tried the battery out of my mkv gti (which is huge and definitely fully charged) Corrected HT leads order according to info on this forum. Heres the scenario... The engine initially really didnt want to turn over... With jumpers connected directly from my GTI to the battery terminals in the mini, the starter barely turned over... With the battery from my GTI in the mini directly, it turns over quickly... I have checked that there is spark at each cylinder by pulling the plug and earthing it while cranking the car - all have spark... I have checked that their is fuel at the carb by removing the line - it pumps out pretty solidly.. The little pot next to the fuel line on the carb is full of fuel and that little float thingy moves freely.. I removed that little dipstick type plunger effort from the middle of the carb - the metal cylinder on the end of the plunger is oiled and moves a few millimeters up and down freely... I took the distributor cap off and cleaned the little points in the cap because I'm waiting for a new one to arrive... but there is spark at the cylinders at the moment... The vacuum line from the carb is connected to the distributor I cannot roll the car right now because there's no space in storage, so i cant really check the gapping in the distributor itself at this stage.... So today my old man came through to try lend a hand... I sprayed quickstart into the carb throat directly while he was trying to start her, and we got some big backfiring and a whole lot of dust out the exhaust with each bang... the car sounded like it nearly caught once or twice, but still nothing... we tried full throttle, half, choke on , choke off , everything... car wont start. I tried to advance timing with each attempt at starting her, with little effect,... All i need to do is start the car and get it onto a vehicle trailer or drive it home where it will be stripped and rebuilt by yours truly in my spare time... It is very possible that these "specialist" buyers totally stuffed up something when they were trying to start it... So now, I need some advice.... I am pretty mechanically clued up on more modern cars with EFI and engine management systems etc, so my engine basics are good, but carbs not so much... I noticed that there is an open nipple on the left of the carb, and when the car backfires you can see pressure/fuel/dust shooting out of it... is that normal? I assume the head is still an 1100 head, with the original carb that the car came with.. What should I do next? i would REALLY appreciate the help