Mastiff's carb rebuilding thread - help appreciated!

[Mastiffen]

Sorry, I wish I could! It's a four hour drive up there. So you're flying UPS goods in?

[starfire383]

You still working on it? Does this carburetor say "monojet" anywhere? If it's what I'm thinking, you have the simplest carburetor ever manufactured.

Do you have any commercially available carburetor cleaner? Either aerosol or soak?

I would use actual carb cleaner as it does a better job of cutting through gummy residue. The aerosols are nice because you can shoot thru a passage to be sure it's clear. I like to give them an aerosol bath over a drain pan, then keep them wet with cleaner for an hour or two using what's already in the drip pan brushed back over the top.

If you have access to ultrasonic tanks, those also work well but don't soak with the power on for more than an hour or two.

Power piston- Basically, if you can take it out and reassemble without damaging the carburetor, take it out. You never know what crud lurks beneath.

good luck

[Monza Madness]

Use safety glasses when you use carb spray and keep your mouth closed!! you never no were it will shoot out of the castings, good stuff but be careful!!

[spyder_xlch]

It only burns for a little while.

[vegatex]

Sorry, I wish I could! It's a four hour drive up there. So you're flying UPS goods in?

Yep. Where do you live in Norway?

[NixVegaGT]

Dave sorry it's off topic but when did you get the Sunbird wagon?

[vegatex]

Dave sorry it's off topic but when did you get the Sunbird wagon?

I'm pretty sure it was early 2006, I'm keeping it in Louisville as my airport car. Great car, there's more right with it than wrong with it. It's got the Edelbrock cam, intake manifold, and carb kit on it. But the used rebuilt engine I put in to replace the factory original 3.8 is burning oil and had lots of blow-by and the tranny is leaking even after replacing the front seal. But it runs great if you keep feeding it fluids! Just went from Louisville to Defiance, OH and back last week to help a buddy pick up a 450SL he bought on eBay.

I would really like to put a fresh rebuilt 4.1 long block and a rebuilt TH-350 in it. Other than the GT/Formula "conversion" I've done, I plan to keep it stock appearing and restore it instead of doing another conversion project. Maybe after I get the Vega apinted I'll turn my attentions to that.

[res0o7eb]

It only burns for a little while.

Personal experience, Matt?

[Mastiffen]

Dave, I live a lot longer south, a place called Risør (known even in posh circles in New York for it's chamber music festival). It takes three hours to get to Oslo, and Gardermoen is on the other side of Oslo, which makes it another hour.

[NixVegaGT]

It only burns for a little while.

Personal experience, Matt?

Ha ha ha! LOL. Good one.

[spyder_xlch]

Yes, I've had eye fulls of carb clean and brake clean, even had gas drip in my eye. The worst was the battery acid in my mouth. Stupid sucks.

[vegatex]

Dave, I live a lot longer south, a place called Risør (known even in posh circles in New York for it's chamber music festival). It takes three hours to get to Oslo, and Gardermoen is on the other side of Oslo, which makes it another hour.

Gardemoen is really in a stupid location, as most Norwegians agree. I hate staying at the airport. We used to stay at the Grand Hotel, but some genius decided that being in downtown Oslo was too good a deal, so now we get the Airprort Radisson. I'll look for Risør on the map!

[Mastiffen]

You can wave if you fly over us!

Matt, I have had battery acid in my mouth as well, but I have a good excuse: I was 16 years, on my first moped and overfilled the battery with water. So I was gonna suck out something, and didn't think about that it had mixed with the rest of the fluid in there. Then again that wasn't as bad as one could expect, so it was probably not fully mixed!

[Mastiffen]

Dave, here's Risør:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=no&g ... 5&z=7&om=0

And my house:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=no&g ... &z=11&om=0

[Mastiffen]

Back to the scheduled program. I have the carb back in, with no parts left on the table and clean as a whistle, and about as efficient. OK, that was a bit too harsh. It's now idling pretty well (after a bit of toying with the mixture screws, one turn out is the starting point, two more out made it pretty good), and it never dies when I release the pedal, even after a full acceleration and hard breaking. That was a problem before.

And on full pedal it kicks as it should, with no hesitation. But it did that before as well.

The problem is that the midrange is off. The pedal in the middle means either just hesitation for maybe five seconds, and then it'll get better, or it means full hesitation, and it doesn't get anywhere.

Could this be the float? When I measured it I found both the float drop level and float level totally off, with as much as 50 %, both with larger gaps then I have now. I now have what should be the correct levels according to the shop manual.

I had much of the same problem before I started the carb rebuild as well, so I'm wondering if it may be something else. Any vacuum leak should give me grief on idle more than midrange, if I'm correct. And I have the correct ignition timing ( think), and I can see that it moves up when I pull the lever to increase RPM. But I think the problem got worse when I changed the plug wires, the distributor cap, the rotor and adjusted the timing. Is it possible that I'm adjusting timing on the wrong cylinder? I'm using the front cylinder on the driver's side.

Is there anything else I have overlooked, or should I try to disasemble the top of the carb again and adjust the float level?