Carburator Help- need some guidance

Just a thought, but could the floats be stuck down, keeping the shot off from working and causing an overflow?  This may be a bit if a reach, though.

Looks like (in the first photo) the carb top is definitely cracked where "B" is pointing. Probably due to a poor casting of the part. There's a definite line in the paint that appears to be hiding the crack. Maybe take the paint off where "B" is pointing and see if the metal is cracked. Certainly looks like it.

Where'd you buy the carbs?

Call them Monday or Tuesday and see if they can spring you a new top cover or maybe one from a returned carb (WHAT?  Someone returned an EMPI, Chinese Weber Knock-off???)  I've heard that some EMPI parts and Spanish/Italian Weber parts are not, necessarily, interchangeable, so getting an EMPI replacement top cover makes a bit of sense.  If your carburetor guy is OK with this , then do it.

I seriously doubt that too-high fuel pressure is the issue here, but what do I know?  I'm running Dellortos and don't even have a fuel pressure gauge!   Still......It's only on one of two carbs and you've got gas pooling in places that don't make sense unless the casting has developed some porosity (ask Lane about casting porosity - he's a pro).  The pilot valves are working OK, IMHO, but when they close the pump pressure drives the fuel somewhere and it has found a weakness in the casting before the pilot valve to weep from.

Time for a new(er) top cover.  Compare the rebuild cost versus new (real) Webers and decide what makes the most sense.

Real Webers are not all that dependable and have difficulty running out of the box.  You should be able to find a used replacement.  There are carbs out there that were left in the rain, under water, on burned engines or have worn bushings.  

If none of the above works out for you in the past I have cleaned with brake cleaner and dried the area and used JB Weld with good results - let it fully cure before using. Watch it closely for awhile running to make sure it is resolved. This is not the best solution but this fix can last years - some people will disagree - this a fuel leak - something  to to take seriously. 

EMPI=Ditch em!

 

What's the condition of the rubber fuel hose around the clamp? Is it an ethanol-resistant hose? A very small leak in the hose could be spraying fuel into the affected areas. I'd think that more likely than a crack in the carb body.

Replacing the hose would be a quick and easy first step in figuring this out.

 

I think you have a leaky aluminum drift plug (the one on the "A" circle) It also could be the the fiber (or Aluminum ) gaskets on either end of the fuel inlet housing as well . Take the airhorn (the top of the carb) off and pressurize it with your mouth using  a hose connected to the fuel inlet nipple while holding the float up (float needle closed) while submerging it in a bucket of water. Any air leaks should be evident......Bruce

Thank you guys. I appreciate your help.

W, a few of the Qs-

- The Empis came on the Car from VS.

- The hose is new... Ethanol- resistant.  Changed it today.  

i also had the carb on the garage bench for a bit... Under a magnifying glass.  Cleaned it, checked all the gaskets, etc... hard to tell what was a healthy seem or a possible crack. 

But it's when I re- installed and tested under pressure that noticed the weeping, and a few bubles.  I re- cleaned and re tested several times... Always the same results- bubbles and fuel weeping in multiple places...

 It really stinkS, but I guess I got lucky.  In the past three days I have driven ~412 miles ( Seattle, Bellingham, Leavenworth, Olympia, - i.e.  long coffee runs) ..., car could have caught on fire... Fuel was pooling on my engine tin.  

I have been dreaming of driving during my nearly two months of travel... Now I'm sidelined for a bit.   Such is life....part of the madness I guess.

will hit the local shops in town next week.  The guy I really want to go to is booked through mid September. he only works on one car at a time.... But maybe he will take my carb in as a side project.   He's a retired genius with T1/t4 and Porsche engines, and the reason why my VS runs as reliably as my Honda. The other two guys/ shops are hit and miss but carbs are their bread and butter...  l so we will see what they come up with and at what $$$$$$.

with a little luck  i can get the car back on the road before my next trip to Europe. ( in two weeks.)

Million thanks,

Luis

 

Quick status in case anyone is interested.

- EMPI carb was not leaking due to bad casting or crack.

- the leak was coming from the carb top cover fuel inlet drill hole plug.  The plug filler material had developed a leak.   ( Bruce, you guessed it right... Wow!) 

- an awesome local engine guy was able to recreate the condition I had observed in the car on his bench.  Capillary action was causing the gas to travel to funny places... Some higher than the leak it self as one of my original pictures showed.

- he drilled out the old drill plug ( circular plug arrow is pointing at in the attached picture), and re-plugged using JD weld.  He said he's done several of these repairs on EMPIs HPMX carbs in the past few years...  Empi does not sell top covers.

- been able to put about 400miles in the car in the past few days... Day trips from Seattle  to Leavenworth WA ( 240mi round trip and through one mountain pass), and a couple coffee runs to  crystal mountain ( next to Mt Rainier).   Everything is dry... Will see how this holds up.   

will keep an eye on it, and will replace with new carbs if necessary, but he recommended keeping these carbs until they start to give me problems.... 

- he said in the old days Webber would plug similar fuel inlet drill holes w/ lead, but recent environmental regulations prohibit this, and aluminum is commonly used...  Unfortunately it does not  always hold well if there are any pollutants in the mix.

in addition, and on a recommendation from Pat D. / CB I will be installing a set of these -- Webber Jet Doctor kit--- 

https://www.cbperformance.com/...asp?ProductCode=7557

https://www.cbperformance.com/v/weberjetdoctor.html

... I ran into a clogged idle jet situation, probably some junk snuck in while the car was being worked on...  Thank you Pat for your help.

Cheers,

luis

Good to hear it was resolved. So what's the new compound in the JD weld?

;-)... Sorry fat fingers.   JB Weld it is ;-)

If this was my only typo, I would be a happy man... Ever since touch screens and auto correct took over, the quality of my written story twlling has seriously declined!!! 

Story telling has also declined.  

Luis....Yup...those little plugs start leaking sometimes and it's usually the last thing you'd think of checking.  When i used to do a lot of carb service we got a lot of "Qradrajet" carbs in for running rich. It was two little "freeze plugs" about 5/16' diameter on the bottom of the fuel bowl. Had to remove the carb. base to even see them. The fix was remove them, swab them with some epoxy and reinstall. Those old lead plugs would leak too but usually a rap with a drift punch would swell them up again and cure the leak.

Those jet doctors are trick ! IF  you ever get a plugged idle jet again you can blow compressed air down that jet doctor tube and temporarily fix it until you get home. A small can of compressed air for blowing off your keyboard is handy to keep in your little tool kit on board. It's also way of finding out which jet is/was plugged too.

Bruce

Whoa.......Bruce has successfully worked on Quadrajets.

I think that qualifies him for Druid robes and the tossing of chicken bones.

 

Gordon... I had a good laugh about your comment about Druids and chicken bones! That was so funny ! But TRUE ! Sometimes you just DO have to defer to throwing and reading the bones to figure out what the F is going on ! Your comment was very well liked by me.....Thanks......Bruce

Quadrants can be confusing but the good thing about them is once you get them adjusted right they stay that way for along time. Holley carbs however are affected by biorhythms, tides, moon phases and sperm levels.  Kidding aside, Bruce is a fountain of knowledge and has helped me out on a lot of things.

Bruce:  When I lived in Beaufort, SC, there was a retired fellow in my car club named Lowell Rorrer - He had this great email address "OldRoarer".  He had been a production line engineer for General Motors for 39 years and knew everything about every GM model from the 1950's to about 2,000.  He owned a 100-point 1954 Chevy and a '64 Pontiac Parisienne from Canada, a specific model and year of which few were made but, to him, was about the ultimate of anything GM ever produced.

He also knew everything about Quadrajets, including how to really make them work.  One time, at one of the club gatherings at our club garage, "The Cave", I was running off at the mouth about how awful the Quadrajet carb was and how I could never get one to really run right.  Lowell had this thick Ohio accent:  "Now, Gordy, ain't nuthin wrong with the blessed Quadrajet.  You're just mis-understanding the poor things."  Then he invited me to his home on Coffin Point on one of the Sea Islands (where he had a Quonsett Hut garage which could easily fit 8 cars, two lifts and a shop) to show me how to tune a Quadrajet.  

I show up the next weekend and he has his Parisienne opened up and, sure enough, there's one of the dreaded "Quad"s on it.  "I just finished rebuilding this one and purposely left a few things to do to show you how to do it."  He then started in a step by step way of going through it, setting up the fuel flow and metering jets on each throat by adjusting here, having me bend wire actuators there, until that thing was sitting there, happily purring in a dead-steady idle.  All told, it took about 15 minutes.

With twinkling eyes, he says "Let's take 'er out an' see what she'll do!"  So we left his garage and got out to the middle of the island onto SC 21, which is about stick-straight for 5 miles down the center of St. Helena island.  All the while getting off of Coffin Point that car was as smooth as silk.  We head West on SC 21, he gets on it and it just about leaps.  In no time, we're up to around 100mph, Lowell smiling and looking very pleased with his/our work.  As we're hurtling along close to 100, I see a local police cruiser just about to enter from a side street.  "Watch out, Lowell, That was a cop car!"  Lowell starts to slow down and pulls in to the next side street and stops, with enough room behind for the cruiser, which pulls up and parks behind him.  I figured he was in for a ticket for sure.  Up walks not just a cop, but the Chief of Police for Beaufort.  "Hey, Lowell!  Heard you was workin' on the 'French Lady' - How's she runnin'?"   "Running' like a top, Fred.  Gordy and me jus' finished settin' up the Quadrajet an' it's jus' like new.   Hey, you met Gordy?" and he proceeds to introduce me to the Beaufort Chief of police, and also the car club secretary and owner of a mint, '58 Chevy Impala.

Lowell died while we were still living in Beaufort, from multiple complications related to severe Lyme Disease.  Everyone in the club drove their cars to the funeral - between our club and a few from the Hilton Head/Savannah area we must have had close to 100 classic cars there.  A great send-off for a great guy.

Great story. On a slightly different note, Coffin Point law enforcement is legendary. Chicken bones and all.

Gordon...That was a very endearing story about Lowell. I have a similar one about Wild Bill Slauson. He was a mechanic and stock car/ jalopy racer back in the 50s in NW Iowa. I'll save it for another time...when it's slow here......Bruce

OMG!  Ed McTeer!   YES!  He was a "White Witch Doctor" but he was also the Beaufort County Sheriff for decades.  His nemesis was a guy who lived on St. Helena island, and locally named "Doctor Buzzard".  I believe Doc Buzzard was a descendant of slaves from the local plantations and practiced a form of VooDoo.  Doctor Buzzard's wife was Valerie Boles, the basis for the VooDoo Priestess, Minerva, in the movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", set in Savannah, GA (and filmed mostly in the late Johnny Mercer's house).  More about her here.

McTeer was very well liked as a fair Sheriff to everyone and the equal, in his VooDoo arts, to Doctor Buzzard - Amazing for a "White Witch Doctor".  After he died, the county named the SC 802 bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway from Beaufort to Lady's Island the "Ed McTeer Bridge" in Ed's honor.  

One good (and true!)  story about Ed was when a bunch of them "No'theners" came to town one winter, and took over Cat Island (on the eastern end of what is now the Ed McTeer bridge) to turn it into a Nudist Colony back in the 1930's.  Proper Beaufortonians were up in arms about the thought of "All-a them people, prancin' around in their altogether" and just WHAT was Sheriff McTeer gonna do about it?  "We don't want them Nudies influencin' our kids!"

Ed told everyone that they should all just simmer down, those Nudy people were keeping to their place and weren't harming anyone and "I think this whole situation will just take care of itself in a little while."  

Sure enough, a couple of months later, when it got into Spring and the sand gnats ("no-see-um" black flies - They come in vast clouds there) and mosquitos came out in force, they drove the Nudists off of Cat Island and they later sold the island to a developer (someone here on the SOC has a house lot out there, and there is a fine golf course and restaurant there now).  Proper Beaufortonians breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That's just one of thousands of terrific stories about the legendary Ed McTeer, Sheriff of Beaufort County, SC for over 30 years and beloved by whites and blacks alike.  Not many like him, then or now.

And for you VooDoo fans out there, I googled Doctor Buzzard and got this link:

http://www.thestate.com/living/article56831243.html

Truth be told, I never knew his real name and I have never sought out his grave on St. Helena.  Might be a little scared to.  He's just fine there without me bothering him.

Also, for you movie buffs, at the end of Pat Conroy's movie, "The Prince of Tides", Nick Nolte, who has been freed from his demons of a disturbing childhood, ends the movie by driving off into the sunset in his Mustang and over a long, sweeping bridge.  Very cool aerial shot of the ending.

Yes, That is the Ed McTeer bridge over to Lady's Island, with Cat Island just off to the right.

But right now, be concerned for lane Anderson in Chas'tn - they're about to get hit with a Tropical Storm.....The first of the season.  Looks like it's gonna be a looooong season. 

aircooled posted:

Gordon...That was a very endearing story about Lowell. I have a similar one about Wild Bill Slauson. He was a mechanic and stock car/ jalopy racer back in the 50s in NW Iowa. I'll save it for another time...when it's slow here......Bruce

NW Iowa? Do tell. You a Hawkeye, Bruce?

WOLFGANG posted:

Real Webers are not all that dependable and have difficulty running out of the box.  You should be able to find a used replacement.  There are carbs out there that were left in the rain, under water, on burned engines or have worn bushings.  

I take issue with this statement. I have Spanish Webers that were purchased new in 2001. They have been nothing BUT reliable. And they only seem to plug an idle jet if I futz with them or clean the air cleaners. Other than that, the most reliable and best performing carbs I've ever dealt with. Period!

Yeah, I wouldn't trust ANY carburetor to plug-N-play "right out of the box".  They ALL need to be set-up before use, IMO.

I can't honestly say I've ever dealt with a "bad" Weber.  They do seem a bit sensitive to crud sucked through the air cleaner assemblies, but that can be dealt with by careful air cleaner installation and using Jet doctors (if you have Dells, go to horizontal discharge tubes instead of the Jet Doctors).  There are a LOT of Hot Rods out there running multiple Webers without problems.

I'm using K&N filter elements and always put a bead of grease on the top and bottom rubber frames of the filter element before I put them onto the carb plate and put the top plate on, and that seals them up nicely.

Webers are like just about any other carburetor.  Take your time cleaning, assembling and adjusting them properly and they tend to reward you with good service.  Understanding them comes in somewhere there, too.  Something that a lot of people kind of gloss over.

 

 

If you can find an empi top plate then get it. I have seen these crack when people use Teflon tape on the inlet port fitting and over tighten them and crack the housing. Do not mix weber parts with your empi carbs. Some parts do interchange but not worth taking a chance. Your engine will run better with a set of weber carbs. 

Quick status  on the EMPI carb  repair/Customer Support request;

- I heard back from EMPI...  took them a little to respond to my request for help on 5/7, but their response & support was better than anticipated.

- They offered to send me a new replacement carb.  Carb is being shipped today.   They don't sell the top plates, so this was their solution to my request for repair/support.

- they also sent me a used top cover that has been tested/installed/has no leaks....  I received the top plate last Friday (before I received their email response to my original request), with a letter of apology for their delayed response, offering this top plate as a band aid until a new carb was sent out to me. 

-  All at no cost to me.    All they asked is that I send back the leaky top carb cover and old carb when the new one is installed.  They also pre-paid for return postage

---  I did not provide any receipts for the carbs, as they came installed new form VS.  in my original request for help all i provided them was the cars history- new build from VS, engine displacement /mileage/ & short video of leak..

- I mentioned the JB weld repair, and they said not to worry.... to just send the leaky carb back. 

A VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE.... GREAT CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

I will keep motoring with the HPMX until they poop out. 

Cheers

Wow! Great service.

I've had recent issues with my Spanish Weber's and spent $500 getting them not-fixed.   They run well when I apply pedal-to-the-metal, but when sitting at idle, I sound like I'm running on 2 cylinders.  I am seriously thinking about going to a single 44 Weber.

Clogged idle jets on one side?
>

EVERYTHING was gone through last week by Proflow Performance (big time air cooled racing engine guy)

 Thanks

It still can happen. It's a quick and easy check and fix.
>

Webers can be a hobby unto their own!  As much as EMPI is mal-aligned unless you have monster engine - I go with the EMPI's Lfepardo has. I suspect you'd have to hack at the engine lid rain shield to fit a single carb with top mounted air cleaner.

I've seen Danny P. work wonders on carbs at Carlisle.  Bad linkage, mis-adjusted linkage, air/vacuum leaks, clogged jets, float levels, fuel pressure, bad gas, altitude, phase of moon are all factors affecting Webers. 

I agree with everything you said Wolfgang. Somebody on here told me about a low profile intake manifold and I have looked through all my notes and I can't find it. You haven't heard anything like that have you?

go back to basics.  check the linkage that both carbs are opening at the same time.

check the balance of the carbs. your description sounds like one carb is not balanced with the other.[throttle plate opened more on one carb than the other]

and of close is there any popping or backfiring when you open the throttle?

then remove idle jets and clean them along with the idle circuit.

and what ever you do, Don't go to a single carb weber. first it won't fit, second you might as well put a stock 1600 single carb on it and again you will have clearance issues.

owning one of these cars is a learning lesson in patience.

Type 3 manifolds are short.

X2 on the linkage...Synching them properly is so very important. Take the car to your carb guy and get his help if needed.