Synchronicity

The Elan's previous owner had a shop rebuild the Strombergs as part of a laundry list of maintenance items.  I assumed they got the synchronization pretty close, but I was unable to confirm this with my Synchrometer due to space issues, so eventually ordered a Unisyn which is perfectly at home in the confines of an Elan engine bay.  Much to my surprise, not only weren't the carbs synchronized, but they were about as far out as possible.  At idle, the back carb was closed, leaving the front carb to feed all the cylinders thanks to the carb adapter cross over tube and siamesed ports.  To put things in perspective, things were so bad that covering the front carb with the Unisyn wide open (i.e. partial blockage) killed the engine immediately, while completely blocking the rear carb intake with my hand produced zero change to idle speed.

After getting the carbs correctly synched, the mixture was revisited and slightly richened.  The engine now runs even better.  I still wish there was more top end, but this thing is extremely torquey and belies the meager 1.6L displacement.