Fitment of HNJ Engineering Conversion Kit

Preamble

In the last couple of months I’ve also been working on an SU Carburettor conversion for LGL. The original Solex Carb never ran particularly smoothly or gave great economy. Despite the professional rebuild, it was never going to be as good as new but it served a purpose as there were few alternatives out there.

A common conversion is to install a Zenith Series carburettor but originals are few and far between. Inexpensive copies are available but not of the greatest quality… and users report they have their peculiarities the same as the Solex.

I like the Land Rover to be reliability and economical. Using the original set up just recently, I was getting neither and after 55 years, the carburettor is probably passed its best. That’s not to say it’s scrap, it’s just time for an upgrade to a more modern solution.

Luckily there just happens to be a modern solution out there…

HNJ Engineering offer a kit of parts to allow the Series Land Rover owner to upgrade their Solex / Zenith Series carburettors to either an SU HIFF 44 or the Zenith Stromberg carburettor. I went for the SU HIF44 option.

I’ve bought tools from them before and they are of very high quality… as is there conversion kit. They’d been posting development of some of the parts on the Series 2 forum for a while and it became clear, this was the way to go.

What’s not included is the actuall carburettor. This is more than reasonable as this is a very specialist item, with many applications all with subtle nuances.

There are numerous HIF44 carbs for sale on eBay but then it becomes another project in itself bringing it back to a usable and reliable standard.

I got my new SU HIF44 Carb from Burlen in the UK. They are the sole manufacturer of SU carbs and carry all the spares you could possible need. They’re also extremely helpful should you need to give them a ring.

The Parts

  • Credit: HNJ Engineering
  • SU HIF 44 Carburettor

The conversion kit is designed for the RHD vehicle in mind, so the new throttle cable supplied would be way too long for LGL. The advice from HNJ Engineering was to use a cable from an early 2.5 Litre petrol 90 / 100. If you have a LHD vehicle and want to use a shorter cable, you’ll need the following:

  • LHD petrol throttle cable: NTC2087
  • Nut: NT112041L

The quality of these replacement parts doesn’t come close to that of the cable from HNJ Engineering. I had thought to install the outer of the LHD throttle cable and use the thicker inner from HNJ but it doesn’t fit inside. The replacement inner is so thin, I bought another to carry with me!

Installation

The first thing to do is removed the air hose, the old Solex carb, vacuum advance pipe, insulator block, gaskets and disconnect the fuel line.

  • Before
  • I left the linkage for the Solex carb in place for the time being

Next, the studs were screwed and thread locked into the new elbow:

  • Nicely threaded M8 studs. A drop of thread lock is added to the end entering in the casting.
  • Using two nuts locked together, the studs are screwed into the aluminium alloy elbow.

The elbow can be now be offered up to the inlet manifold:

  • Gasket first then the billet spacer…
  • … then the 2nd Gasket…
  • …followed by the elbow, gasket, insulator, gasket, cable hanger and another gasket.
  • With that done, the carburettor could now be fitted

The next part to be installed is the carburettor but before that can happen, I need to change the needle and pistons spring to the recommend settings from HNJ Engineering, namely…

  • Needle: BDL
  • Spring: Yellow

I’ll cover how this is done in the next post.