The first few turns of the key nothing happened, sprays of starting fluid got us a few backfires then the engine coughed into life for a few seconds, soundly very sickly and died.
After a quick survey we discovered the spark-plug leads had been reconnected incorrectly, through nobodies fault because the layout of them makes zero sense to a sane person.
Which leads me to the best tip when working on a Sonnet: nothing makes sense. Ever. Just accept it.
Once that was fixed we tried again, this time the engine popped into life and began to backfire and spit burning hot globs of gasoline a solid 4 feet into the air out of the carburetor. Upon closer inspection we noted the carb was flooding.
We suspected a float issue, so the carb came off for rebuilding. I have a performance two-barrel Weber 32/36 DGV carburetor and ordered the appropriate rebuild kit. Took apart the lid and immediately discovered the problem, the float was glued to the bottom of the fuel bowl by a half-inch layer of crud.
Two cans of carb cleaner, a toothbrush, and the rebuild kit and I had a shiny clean rebuilt carburetor. I may have gotten a little carried away cleaning because I took off the throttle and choke linkage, but that actually ended up helping tremendously.
The carb had obviously been rebuilt previously and whoever had done it hadn't bothered to properly reattach the choke rod to the proper linkage, I reattached it along With the rest of the linkage and bolted the carb back on the car.
Now when we fired it up the engine absolutely roared into life, unfortunately a little too much roaring, for whatever reason the choke still isn't (this is now caught up to the present) fully engaging without somebody holding it. When its held down the car idles like it should. Still need to diagnose that issue.
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