Erratic idle, keeps cutting out!

Hi there, i bought a series 3 a while back and have spent the past week trying to get it running again after sitting around for the winter. After much playing around i now have fuel and sparks and have managed to get the engine to start but it only lasts a few seconds before it cuts out. The longest i have managed it about 10 seconds and even then it was a very erratic idle. Distributor cap and rotor arm is looking a bit worn, plus the conection from vacuum advance unit to the carb it broke (held together with duct tape ) might be part of the problem? On another note there is a very loud metal on metal grinding noise coming infront of the gear box which continues even after the engine cuts out (have check flywheel teeth and greased benedix on starter to try and combat this but no joy!) might be related to cut out but i have no idea. sorry for the essay but i really have no idea what else to try haha any help would be great! cheers!

Did you bother to change the fuel thats been sat in it for months? Hm? Didya?? Hm?

old petrol

i guess i always forget the simplest option, to eager to take things apart haha! will give it a try, thanks.

drained the whole system and put some new fuel in and it's working a little better now but still a bit temperamental. Will keep running it every now and then to throw some oil about inside. thanks for the help!

Mine was running erraticly aswell after being sat over the winter, it was running but either very fast or very slow and sometimes stalling. I took the carb off, cleaned the jets and replaced the gaskets. I also noticed the the throttle didnt come all the way back to the idle screw so i cleaned all the linkages up and sprayed it all with WD40 seems to be fine now.