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Eric
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12 minutes ago, Eric said:

I’ve rebuilt a lot of carbs. I would have loved to have access to a flow bench and decking machines And such. There is only so much you can do with a kit, some Chemdip and proper adjustments. It used to irk me to have to take a carb to a shop, if it needed something I didn’t have the equipment to deal with. 

That's why I spent so much time on them.  I guess it's my failing, but I'm obsessive about knowing things.  I played with jet combinations, and purposely screwed them up along with the power valves to create know symptoms.  I even switched the primaries and secondary's just to see what it would run like if some other idiot did it.  Poor gas mileage and performance but in a pinch...……………….

I crossed 2 bbl.'s with 4 bbls on two and four bbl manifolds, with and without adapter plates.

I got so unimpressed with carburetor atomization that one day I took the carb off my Mustang and hung a pop can with gas over the manifold hole.  The damn car actually started and run, rough I grant you, but it ran!

One Sports Car Graphic Magazine had an article on a plastic plenum below various carburetors and posted pictures of the atomization.  It was horrible!  maybe as good as a common garden hose nozzle.  This was in the 60's and 70's.

 

I learned to diagnose the flow and mixture from reading the sparkplugs across the engine along with the actual performance driving.   I used to enjoy that stuff.  Now I pay the price to let someone else enjoy that work.

Edited by janice6
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In an English Writing class at college I was tasked with writing a paper on explaining a complicated process to someone that never had done the task.

I wrote the paper on rebuilding a Quadra Jet Carburetor.  I seem to remember a pretty good grade on it.  The funny part was that the professor told me that he actually believed he could do the rebuild after reading the paper.  (Ignorance is bliss)

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1 minute ago, janice6 said:

That's why I spent so much time on them.  I guess it's my failing, but I'm obsessive about knowing things.  I played with jet combinations, and purposely screwed them up along with the power valves to create know symptoms.  I even switched the primaries and secondary's just to see what it would run like if some other idiot did it.  Poor gas mileage and performance but in a pinch...……………….

I crossed 2 bbl.'s with 4 bbls on two and four bbl manifolds, with and without adapter plates.

I got so unimpressed with carburetor atomization that one day I took the carb off my Mustang and hung a pop can with gas over the manifold hole.  The damn car actually started and run, rough I grant you, but it ran!

One Sports Car Graphic Magazine had an article on a plastic plenum below various carburetors and posted pictures of the atomization.  It was horrible!  maybe as good as a common garden hose nozzle.  This was in the 60's and 70's.

 

I learned to diagnose the flow and mixture from reading the sparkplugs across the engine along with the actual performance driving.   I used to enjoy that stuff.  Now I pay the price to let someone else enjoy that work.

Without the right equipment though I couldn’t plane warped decks on carburetor sections, or deal with housing holes wallowed out around butterfly shafts. Things like that. Some problems required an infrastructure I didn’t have. I accomplished quite a bit with what I had though. 

I guess that is one more skill I picked up, over the years, that I can throw on the trash heap. Progress marches on.

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3 minutes ago, janice6 said:

I got so unimpressed with carburetor atomization that one day I took the carb off my Mustang and hung a pop can with gas over the manifold hole.  The damn car actually started and run, rough I grant you, but it ran!

I worked with a guy (mechanic) that drove to work one day with no carb on his car.  He had poked a hole in the bottom of a gallon antifreeze jug,  ran a tiny tubing into the manifold  filled the jug with gas,  and held it out of the window.

At signs / lights he had to hold it low,  and keep bobbing it,  for idle.  Going down the main roads,  he held his arm up as high as he could.

He bought a carb-kit and repaired it during lunch.

 

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1 minute ago, Eric said:

Without the right equipment though I couldn’t plane warped decks on carburetor sections, or deal with housing holes wallowed out around butterfly shafts. Things like that. Some problems required an infrastructure I didn’t have. I accomplished quite a bit with what I had though. 

I guess that is one more skill I picked up, over the years, that I can throw on the trash heap. Progress marches on.

OH, I didn't mean that I actually planed heads and did valve jobs.  I had a machine shop in St. Paul on my way to work that did a valve job with fantastic service for $50 or $60 bucks if I dropped off the heads.

I didn't machine anything!

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1 minute ago, Huaco Kid said:

I worked with a guy (mechanic) that drove to work one day with no carb on his car.  He had poked a hole in the bottom of a gallon antifreeze jug,  ran a tiny tubing into the manifold  filled the jug with gas,  and held it out of the window.

At signs / lights he had to hold it low,  and keep bobbing it,  for idle.  Going down the main roads,  he held his arm up as high as he could.

He bought a carb-kit and repaired it during lunch.

 

I actually believe this!

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16 minutes ago, janice6 said:

OH, I didn't mean that I actually planed heads and did valve jobs.  I had a machine shop in St. Paul on my way to work that did a valve job with fantastic service for $50 or $60 bucks if I dropped off the heads.

I didn't machine anything!

I was referring to the Machine work sometimes required on the carburetor housings themselves. The most common issue was the housing wallowing out around the main butterfly shaft, allowing vacuum to draw air around it. To fix it, the shaft would have to be removed, the hole for the shaft through the housing bored oversize and bronze bushings pressed in. I’ve done a bootleg job of this procedure before, but without the right equipment, it is about impossible to do it right.

Anyway, I didn’t do any engine machine work myself either. There were  good machine shops out there that worked for reasonable prices. When you found good shops, like radiator shops, transmission shops and machine shops, those are relationships that it paid to cultivate. Good trade shops were worth their weight in gold. 

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1 minute ago, Eric said:

I was referring to the Machine work sometimes required on the carburetor housings themselves. The most common issue was the housing wallowing out around the main butterfly shaft, allowing vacuum to draw air around it. To fix it, the shaft would have to be removed, the hole for the shaft through the housing bored oversize and bronze bushings pressed in. I’ve done a bootleg job of this procedure before, but without the right equipment, it is about impossible to do it right.

Anyway, I didn’t do any engine machine work myself either. There  good machine shops out there that worked for reasonable prices. When you found good shops, like radiator shops, transmission shops and machine shops, those are relationships that it paid to cultivate. Good trade shops were worth their weight in gold. 

I was always aware of the worn hole problem but luckily I never actually ran into one.  We mostly worked on new vehicles and the Mustangs I got for myself I would throw the carb out and replace it with a good one from a junk yard.

One time I had to replace the third member for my Chev rear axel.  I got one from a junk yard and got some lipstick and ran a load pattern on the ring gear.  Then I took it back and got another one.  Later I was in the yard again and the guy asked me if I was the one who had the noisy Chevy third member.  I told him, no.  I was the one that returned it! 

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158FC353-D4CA-4D99-B8CE-9219F7847DD6.jpeg.4c32c6b8cd467ab5916ce18b4ad25bbb.jpeg

Sinclair used to be a presence in middle Tennessee but disappeared. Recently in the four corners area and it is quite common there. Offhand though, don’t know what brand(s) we have in middle Tennessee that they don’t have.


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1 hour ago, tous said:

I don't believe that that feller is pouting gasoline on the lad.

Probably water.

:biggrin:

 

<--- remembers $.19/ gallon leaded gas very well; with Green Stamps

<--- can't remember what year it is

AWWW. You take all the fun out of it.

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40 minutes ago, Eric said:

DC June 1940 Gas Station.jpg

Reminds me of the security video of the woman in the gas station adding oil to her car.  She opened the hood and simply poured it all over the engine.

This is probably visual evidence of just how tight the clearences are now in modern engines.  You almost never see anyone adding oil to their car when filling with gas.

Lower oil sales may also explain why oil back then was 20 cents a quart and now it's $5 a quart.  The consumption of oil went down while the money made from selling oil went ut.

My father's only comment to the gas station attendant was always, "Fill'er up and check the oil!".

Edited by janice6
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