Living life with a carbureted car #blogpost
About half a year ago, I bought a 30 year old car. Life with it hasn’t been the easiest, but I’ll save that story for another time. For now, or until I go offtrack, I’ll focus on my life with said carburetor. I bought this car to be a daily driver and project.
About half a year ago, I bought a 30 year old car. Life with it hasn’t been the easiest, but I’ll save that story for another time. For now, or until I go offtrack, I’ll focus on my life with said carburetor. I bought this car to be a daily driver and project. The project part isn’t so prevalent at this time. So it’s more of a daily. For now at least. Anyway, I should stop stalling and get to the point.
Functionality
Even if my area thinks about getting cold I’ll have trouble starting the car in the morning. My area had a somewhat rough winter so I always had starter fluid on hand. This old thing also burns more gas than a newer v8. The only consolidating things about it is that since the end of April, I’ve had no problem with starting it up.
Performance
My carburetor for lack of better terms is f*cked. The previous owner who tried to get it to run again after being in storage for years, decided to take a flathead screwdriver and pry open the the throttle blade so it is more in the shape of a deformed “U” instead of flat. Now putting that out there the performance is Ehhh.. It propels the car forward, that’s about it. This is even with it set to run SUPER rich.
Overview
I’m impartial to the stock carburetor in my car. But this “review is not entirely out of the blue. I have ordered a new carburetor that should be here this Tuesday or Wednesday. So lucky me. I get to experience all of the horsepower in my car now. I will be doing a follow up review of my car after I have a fully functional carb on it. But until then I’ll leave you with this.
Comments
I know the struggle my friend
I find carburettors very easy to work with and if the engine is hard to start, then something is not right.
Love carbs for the simple fact that they are so easy to maintain, it is usually obvious what is causing it to not work properly.
The struggle all of my cars even my Honda
Oh no, a Honda carb. I’ve heard horrible things about them, especially bad things about the 3 barrel version
I’ve had a dodge with a carb and now ford with a carb.
Gotta love that pump pump start..
And rev the engine while shutting it off to fill the carb bowl to ease up next start. (Mechanical fuel pump)
In my opinion, if the carb has no play to it, especially in the throttle plate arm.
You can just buy a repair kit and have it run new again. If not then get a brand new carburetor. Buying an old used one will return the problems shortly after.
My ford has an vacuum powered automatic choke that works by pushing the gas pedal to the floor and then lifting it up and starting the car. Touch the gas pedal and the choke is off.
Personally i like carburetors because they’re easy to tune. (Yes it sounds like i’m joking but they really are.) If all the gaskets are fine and you have no vacuum leaks then they really are easy to adjust on the go.
If you have a working RPM gauge and an air fuel mixture gauge then tuning the carb gets 10 times easier.
Random downvote for no reason. I must have a secret hater.
Are you serious? They’re one of the easiest things on the planet to troubleshoot and provided you keep good notes not that difficult to rebuild either.
On my Suzuki SJ project I have a carb which (as the rest of the car) wasn’t really looked after. It idles ok, but the second throttle plate has a mind of it’s own (it would open but won’t close - I guess it’s a bad spring ) so at the moment I just ziptied it shut. But it does start right up even after sitting outside for a couple of months. I don’t know if I’ll replace the carb with a better one (more flow) or fix the old one… the latter one might be a pain in the… However I could still put on the EFI head (and engine harness) from my old swift engine , but that would defeat the whole purpose of the car.
How the eff do you have a 91-5 S10 Blazer with a carb? As far as I know they’re all TBI or TPI, even rhe iron dukes. By the time 87 rolled around(first year for s10 blazer/s15 Jimmy) I don’t think there was a carbed USDM car at all.
They were actually introduced in 82; I’M pretty sure it’s a 2.8, as the 4.3 didn’t come along in the S10 until after they had introduced TBI. The grille is probably just a newer one that they slapped on, as they were pretty much unchanged for the first 12 years with the exception of interior and exterior trim, and some powertrain updates
My first car was a beetle and I loved the simple engine design. So easy to work on. I did pretty much everything to the engine you can think of. If you want to start tinkering and have no experience I can recommend this is your first car. Plenty of spare parts, simple design, lots of info available.
Agree with Jon Albiez. A carby is easy as to work on. If still available for your model vehicle buy a carburettor kit. They are normally not that expensive and come with all the necessary O rings, needle and seat valve, float etc for a full rebuild. Very therapeutic too! :-)
My e21 has a carb and it has it’s own character with it. Sure the performance and mileage is awful but thats how itnwas back in the day.. But after a service it still has a lagg when flooring, it squats and waits and after 2 sec it finally goes.. Any ideas anyone? The seals are new…
Its the bloody Solex/Pierburg 4A1, right? I had the exactly kind of problem (with a W126 280S),and it was two things: the throttle body/base was worn, not closing completely everytime AND there’s a screw on the top cover that is not described in any repair guide (even the ones from MB and Solex) which is the #1 in the picture (mine doesn’t had the #2). It adjusts the spread of the fuel jet in the transition from idle to acceleration. When it’s o’ring worns out or someone closes it, there’s that “bog” in acceleration. Turn it counterclockwise to enlarger the “spread” of the jet and test. If it’s completely closed, give it two turns to start testing. I hope it helps you, I was getting mad after 19 months going crazy with that carb. Almost 100% of my free time, I was researching about that stupid “bog”. All my sunday mornings I was messing with the two air/fuel screws, float and everything, and getting NOTHING. Much people throw it away because of that bog, but hopefully a very gently sir from a carb tune shop here in Brazil helped me to fix all the issues. In the beginning, he wisely denied, but after I dismantled the carb and asked him about a bit or two, he agreed to help me and we are good friends today. Good luck!
PS.: Check if the o’rings of the two air/fuel adjustment screws are ok. One of mine was too big and jammed into the hole (they’re very tight fitted into the screws), so the engine was stalling easily and running rough. After that, It’s a dream to drive and gets at least 18,5MPG on the road, 13 in city (driving normally). Remember that our gasoline has 27% of ethanol, which kills the mileage about at least 20%.
It’s probably just the mechanical fuel pump on the car trying to pull out more gas.. check to see how well that seals. Or it might just be normal I know my car has a bit of lag when flooring it aswell