Up and running again

Thankfully, the parts from Pierce Manifolds arrived on New Years Eve and I had a chance to put the carburetors back together today. Since I had them all off (again), I figured it was prudent to go through them all again, just to be sure. Good thing I did too because I found that another carb had an accelerator pump problem. This one had a clogged pump nozzle, and gas only came out of one side. I cleared out the hole with a single strand from some stranded electrical wire and now it works fine. I was also able to verify all the float heights.

On to the main reason I pulled the carbs apart again. The accelerator pump on one of the carbs did not work at all. I swapped out the pump diaphragm but that did not help. I compared it to another carb and discovered the problem. These carbs have lots of holes, some of which are closed off by lead plugs. In the pump body, there is a hole that is supposed to be plugged. Somehow, maybe during ultrasonic cleaning, this plug went missing. Because the hole was open, the pump diaphragm just pushed fuel back into the float bowl rather than through the pump nozzle. I had an old lead fishing weight in the shop and I cut out a small piece of lead, formed a small cylinder that was slightly larger than the hole and staked it in. Now this pump works as it should.



I still need to do some tuning, but it does seem to run better.