Carb help, 67 Quadrajet

[Guest imported_DaveZZZ]

Hi folks.

Last night I was working on the car, finally getting to the vacuum lines, and I noticed a pretty serious gas leak. I will do my best to describe what is leaking, as it isn't something I have seen on other cars I have had.

On the front of the carb the filter housing makes a 90 degree turn out of the carb to go to the fuel line. On the front of the fitting is a white circle, flush with the face of the fitting. The circle seems like a plastic plug. In my service manual the circle is visible, so I do believe that this is factory. That circle is leaking. Boy do I wish I had a digital camera, because I know that description stinks.

Maybe this diagram will help. FT = filter. The o represents this odd circle which is leaking. This is what you see if standing in front of the grille and facing the carb.

----fuel line--->|FT||O||

So the question is, what is this circle (why is it plastic/epoxy!), and how is this fixed? I consider this to be very dangerous, so any help would be really appreciated.

-Dave

[rocketraider]

Dave, it's a "drill plug" used to plug a hole where the factory drilled a passage in the carb body. It's a common leak on a QuadraJet. The plug should be made of steel with the cover you describe.

Even though it looks like hell, you'll have to mix up some epoxy to remedy this leak. In this location, epoxy may not stop it as it's on the pressure side of the float needle/seat. I think I'd try to fix it on the car, that way you don't disturb the fuel inlet fitting which is also a notorious QJet leak point because the threads strip out of the potmetal casting. Clean the area with some carb cleaner or brake cleaner to get all the oily residue off, then apply the epoxy liberally over the whole plug.

Worst comes to worst, you may have to replace the carb. Holley rebuilds QuadraJets and does a quality job www.holley.com and look under reman line, and you can get these thru AutoZone. Edelbrock now owns the original QJet tooling and can supply a brand new QuadraJet for 66-67 Olds www.edelbrock.com .

[Guest imported_DaveZZZ]

Thanks a lot. When I first saw it, I thought maybe it was one of those hack jobs. The car actually hasn't too much of that (unlike some of the old beaters I have owned).

Do you have a specific type of epoxy to reccomend? Also, should I try to dig out the old epoxy plug, or just apply over it? I'm thinking of how when you fix a hairline crack in plaster you have to dig out the crack a little so that the new stuff has something to sink into.

Finally, I wonder if you know why the factory did this. It seems to me that they could have threaded the hole and use some sort of better-fitting plug.

-Dave