Saturday, January 24, 2009

Replacement carb

Something just wasn't right with that carburetor (or our rebuild of it), so I bought a rebuilt one from The Carburetor Exchange out of Peoria, Arizona. All of the fuel issues are gone. I have confidence moving forward that we can shift our focus elsewhere in making this car run.

Unfortunately, at this moment we again have no spark, so the new carb will have to wait to shine.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

General carb questions

1. Right after I verbally celebrate our achievement in the Carb progress video below, Charles tries to give it gas and it dies with a pop. What would cause this?

2. After a couple of starts and stops we let the engine run at idle to for 10-15 minutes. Once we shut the engine off, however, it wouldn't start again.

Ok. Side note only because I don't know the proper terminology here. What's the difference between cranking, turning over, and starting? When is it correct to use each term? When I turn the key, and the starter, being the loyal reliable component that it is, engages, turning the other components of the engine, but the engine just sits there spinning and draining my battery, is that cranking but not starting? If so, what is turning over? It has no bearing really on the functionality of the engine, but since I am relying on my words to describe things to people on this blog, I'd like to have the right words, and not sound like an idiot. In my world, ignorance is not bliss; it's frustratingly in the way of progress.

Carb progress

We solved the problem of the gas gusher. We used the carb top from the other used carb, and rechecked the float components, as well as the float level. We did modify the float level. It seemed that the float needle didn't go down enough to be able to get the float to the desired one inch mark. We made the adjustments, and everything seemed to be in working order (Charles tested by blowing through the fuel inlet and closing the valve with the float) so we put it all back together and tried again. The video shows the results.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Carb trouble

Have soaked carb in Berryman's overnight, generally cleaned it up in every way I have heard of from various sources. Carb seems to be pretty clean. However, as you can see from the video, gas spits out from the spout at the top of the venturi as well as from the sideways facing tube on the top of the carb. Looking at the shop manual, both of these connect to the fuel bowl vent. So my interpretation is that fuel is gushing out of the fuel bowl vent. What I don't know is why, or if it is not supposed to. Actually what I don't know is anything about carburetors, really. I don't have a working knowledge of carburetors (much of anything car-related for that matter), so I don't know what a properly functioning carb looks like. That being said, I can clearly see that this is not properly functioning. I just don't know how to get it that way.

Watch the carburetor video below.