carbking

Jack - do you have any personal dealings with a Pinto? In a different lifetime, I worked as an engineering technician for an electrical power company. One year, we had to replace some of the vehicles used by the various departments. Accounting was to get two cars, and engineering was to get two cars. Since the company for appearance sake had to buy from both local dealers of American cars, we had a choice between Pintos and Vegas. One of the responsibilites of my boss was the engineering budget. Knowing I was a "car guy", he asked for input. Accounting had already put in their request for two Vegas, as the Vegas were more luxurious. I suggested to gracefully "lose" the selection to accounting and they would then owe engineering a favor. I suggested to buy the Pintos with 4-speed manual transmissions, the 2.0 engine, and have them undercoated. Accounting bought the Vegas, both with auto transmissions. We got the Pintos. We used the Pintos like we should have had Jeeps, quite a bit of the mileage being off-road. Both Vegas lost their engines before 25,000 miles were logged, and were traded. By the time I left the company for other pastures, we had logged more than 200,000 miles on each of the Pintos. Maybe the "model T Ford" of the 1970's??? I would guess the lack of undercoating sent many of them to the scrapper; but the 2.0 engine/4-speed was darn near indestructible. Jon

Stromberg 386089 Free length 1.5 inch O.D. 0.5 inch Wire diameter 0.043 inch 13 full turns, closed on both ends. Not a part of any current repair kit of which I am aware including ours, as Stromberg used different tensions springs on the same base pump for different applications (as did Rochester). The normal procedure is to reuse the old spring and retainer. I do not have access to the spring data for Rochester. Jon

Maxwell tried many of the early carburetor manufacturers. In 1912 and 1913, they used Strombergs on the larger fours. On the 186 CID, Maxwell used: Kingston, Zephyr, K & D, Johnson, Eagle, Stewart, and Zenith. The Zenith used was the T4X, so one has to compete with the antique motorcycle folks for these. If I owned a Maxwell with the 186 CID, it WOULD have a Stewart carburetor. ABear's comments on repairing a float are very good. I would add the following: Once the hole has been located, any fuel in the float may be forced out by holding the float under a hot water faucet with the hole down. The hot water will pressurize the float, and drive out the fuel. Once you have the expansion hole open, use the old type soldering "iron" (actually copper) that you heat with a blow torch. HOLD THE FLOAT IN YOUR FINGERS WHEN SOLDERING. IF YOU CAN'T HOLD IT IN YOUR FINGERS, YOU DIDN'T USE ENOUGH HEAT! Jon

The Standard Six and Victory Six came factory equipped with either a Stromberg zinc alloy (TX-2 superseded by UX-2) and a Stewart (Division of Detroit Lubricator) brass carburetor, with a cast iron throttle body. Because of the fragility of the zinc alloy units and the desire to replace them, the Stewart units virtually disappeared 30 years ago. I knew I had one, but hadn't seen it in probably 30 years. Found it the other day when we sold a bunch of Detroit Lubricator stuff. Like the other Dodge Stewart carburetors, identification is on the bowl cover. Jon

refrigerator Jon

Interesting comments about the price of that Q-Jet. I have been out of carburetor restoration now for 12 years, so I have no dog in this hunt. We did cosmetic and mechanical restoration to each carburetor. Early on, I tried doing rebuilding, and the carbs looked so bad that I ended up restoring about half a dozen that I had quoted rebuilding, and shipped at the quoted price. But I wasn't ashamed at the way the carbs looked. The blurb as posted does not state all of the work that was done, and the linkage does not look like it has been electroplated (perhaps it has). 12 years ago, once we had totally disassembled the carb, and cleaned the castings, and useable linkage pieces; these would be sent to a metal laundry company to do the zinc chromate conversion on the castings, and the yellow zinc electroplate on those steel items requiring yellow zinc, black oxide on those items requiring black oxide, and Teflon coating on the few linkages that required this coating. Average cost to us, 12 years ago, was $250./carburetor. Add to this the cost of a kit (12 years ago, about $80. for a good Q-Jet kit with jets, springs, secondary cam, etc.), a set of primary bushings (about $10 then), the machine time to install the bushings (not going to add the price of the milling machine or the cost of fabricating the fixture) roughly 1 hour machine shop time ($125./hour), roughly 2 hours shop time disassembly ($75./hour), roughly 2 hours shop time assembly and adjustment ($75./hour). Figure 95 percent of Q-Jets with 60k miles are going to require primary bushing. Now, we have to consider incorrect metering rods (many are NLA and must be fabricated), and hangers ($15.), a brass float, a new choke pull-off (some of these can exceed $100. if you can find one). Anyone ever tried fabrication a metering rod on a lathe? Put all that together and adjust for 12 years of inflation, and that $950. doesn't look too bad IF the carburetor is being restored. AFB's are considerably cheaper, as Carter didn't use a foam float that failed as often as a politician tells a falsehood ; the Carter brass floats are generally reuseable, and most do not have a choke pull-off. The major problem with the floats in the AFB was a previous "rebuilder" "one size fits all" attitude. Carter used at least 5 different floats in various AFB's, and they are different for a reason. Also, the AFB's only required body recoloring on the choke housing and pump jet housing. I believe Tom does about the same. Quality work costs premium money. Jon

A bit more information concerning the engine would gain more useful answers. Jon

Try readjusting the idle with a bit more mixture, and a bit less throttle. Jon

Rusty - NO, not progressive linkage!!! How many Jaguar or Austin Healey 6's with 3 carbs did you ever see with progressive linkage??? Why do 3 work better than 2? Look at the cylinder head port configuration. Three siamesed sets of 2. Three smaller carbs work great, but with straight linkage. For the 261, would depend on how mild the hop-up. Three Carter W-0 from Jeep for basically stock to mild modification; three Carter W-1 for a more modified engine. Jon

On a personal note, I don't want one! In 1963, Dad bought me a 1959 Chevy Biscayne with 3 on the tree and a 6 cylinder. This car belonged to a widow of one of Dad's friends that passed before his time. It only has 7000 miles. I wasn't interested in speed (then), but this thing was cutting into my "date money" for gasoline! After recalibrating the odometer (which was about 25 percent fast, gets you out of warranty quicker), I averaged about 12 MPG at 65 MPH. When I told Dad, he told me I was driving too hard. I said OK, I trade it to you for a week for the Ford pickup. Well, he did improve my mileage.......from 12.3 to 12.5. We traded the Chevy 6 for a Ford 8 in a Fairlane that got about 21.

From our sales: Chevy sixes are probably the hottest category we have right now. Rarely a day goes by that we don't get at least one call, generally more. Most have already upgraded, or wanted to upgrade to a Carter, and get rid of the horrible Rochester model B. Lots of multiple carb requests, mostly 2 singles, when 3 singles work so much better. For Ford sixes, we get an occasional request, maybe one every 2 months. For MoPar sixes, we sell a kit for the 1963 with the Stromberg single barrel about once a year. I realize there are others in the carb business, but this is our experience. Jon

1925 ad

Jam Handy produced thousands of films, filmstrips, etc. for the automotive industry, among others. Really great quality. I have been collecting the ones produced for Pontiac for about 50 years. Jon

I have personally run a few dozen of these on everything from 4 cylinder imports to motorhomes, and everything inbetween, including performance engines, race engines, supercharged (blow through) engines, multiple carb set-ups, etc.; additionally, I have built hundreds over the past 60 years. I have encountered two issues: (1) The massive aluminum throttle body gets hot, and modern fuel evaporates. To eliminate cranking the throttle to allow the mechanical fuel pump to fill the carburetor with modern fuel, I have installed electric pumps on my vehicles using AFB's. (2) Over the years, we have modified several AFB's for blow-through supercharged engines. The stock floats are good up to about 5 psi. If the tuner turns up the blower boost above 5 psi, the floats, without modification will collapse. It is necessary to disassemble the floats, and fabricate internal baffles from expanded aluminum to brace the walls of the float (not my idea, Carter did this on the blower Studebakers, sometimes one needs to look at previous engineering). Install the baffles, and re-solder the floats. If folks with basically stock engines and the original properly rebuilt or low mileage AFB's are having other issues, there is probably a reason OUTSIDE of the carburetor. A question I am occasionally asked, is how to re-calibrate for modern fuel? IF the engine is basically stock, and the carburetor is correct for the engine: (1) Acquire the specification sheets for the carburetor, these are available. (2) Increase the diameter of the idle jets 0.002 over stock (3) Increase the diameter of the primary jets 0.001 over stock (4) Increase the diameter of the secondary jets 0.002 over stock This will be extremely close. If the engine is worn out, or highly modified, or the wrong carburetor is being used, then other changes will be required. Jon

There have been a few threads of folks having difficulty with the Carter AFB; possibly this post might help. It is important to understand a couple of possible issues with the Carter AFB, if NORMAL service parts are not replaced in a rebuild. or with extemely high mileage carburetors. (1) For years, Carter used vacuum pistons constructed from brass in the older WCD and WGD 2-barrel carbs with zinc alloy bodies, without problems. In 1957, the (A)luminum (F)our (B)arrel was introduced with an aluminum body. Carter quickly found that the brass pistons would wear the aluminum body, thus messing with the "timing" of the rod step changes, occasionally causing a "flat spot" which is immediately blamed on a working accelerator pump. Carter then changed the composition of the step-up pistons to a SOFT aluminum alloy, much softer than the aluminum used for the body. Thus the step-up pistons are sacrificial to protect the body. New step-up pistons should be installed when a carburetor with say 50,000 miles or more is rebuilt. (2) The step-up piston springs, like ALL springs, fatigue over time. The step-up springs produce a force to counter the force created by engine vacuum to maintain the proper relationship of the rod steps to the primary metering jet. If the springs are fatigued, they will not properly counteract the vacuum, and the rods will ride lower in the primary jet, THUS THE LEANEST STEP OF THE ROD WILL BE IN THE JET. This will cause the engine to run lean; which is immediately blamed on an unknown vacuum leak. There are a number of different step-up springs with different tensions to serve engines with different profiles. Tuners use the different springs to change the timing of the rod step changes in performance engines. If one purchases a used carburetor from an unknown source, even more reason to install new springs during a rebuild. The AFB is a very advanced carburetor, but for proper operation, it must be a good working condition, or it will NOT function as it was designed to function. The above information is NOT intended to be a shameless plug for our rebuilding kits, which do contain these parts; rather as a guide to some who have had issues without changing these important parts. After all, one does not restore an engine, and reuse the fatigued valve springs! Jon