Silvery thing that looks like it should be on a spaceship... goes between the exhaust manifold and air box flappy thing.

this doesnt ring a bell.

on the passenger side, underneath the air filter?

Edit for idiocy., manifolds the other side isnt it?

Goes from the 2" hole that isn't the waterpump

Cheers man, I'll have a shufty in the morning.

If your spaceman pipe doesn't exist, Halfords do them. I can't really see it relating to your problem (didn't on mine) but spose it helps running during winter so definately worth fitting on it not there anyway

I love the fact I'm sure Chris was the one that came up with the 'spaceman tube' term and now it seems universal

SteveP wrote:I love the fact I'm sure Chris was the one that came up with the 'spaceman tube' term and now it seems universal

Me too That's happened with a couple of my random made up words in Soton too... I'll stop playing with the English language one day!

all the pipes/tubes I can find seem ok. No obvious splits or deterioration.
Theres a (breather?) pipe not connected to anything on the drivers side or the carb/air filter housing. Its in full dangle mode. Think Ron mustve overlooked it when putting the carb back together. (it WAS dark and raining)
Sure that should be attached to the carb or air filter housing but with limited eyeball access i cant see where its ,meant to hooked up without taking the air filter housing off. Which im not gonna do without adult supervision.

Are you around tomorrow, early afternoon say? I've got the spare vac. valve back in case that's needed and could come out and sort your pipework once and for all. Ooh-er.

JPB wrote: Are you around tomorrow, early afternoon say? I've got the spare vac. valve back in case that's needed and could come out and sort your pipework once and for all. Ooh-er.

Fraid not dude, Im on lates, so its 1100-2100 for me.

I'll give you a ring tmorrow john.

Do that man, I don't normally offer this sort of after-sales service but I'm determined to help you with getting that little car running as well as it did during my custodianship of it.

can you post a pic of how the vacuumlines run? might be one wrong connected or sth
also, is the restrictor present in the hose that goes trom T-piece on rocker cover to the base of the carb?

symptoms can indeed also point out to a faulty spaceman-tube; or a stuck hot/cold valve in the airfilter housing. try turning the airfilter-intake tube so that it is behind the radiator if it isn't allready there and see how it goes

any chance it is raining/damp when the engine runs terrible; that could point out to a set of f*cked up leads