carb rebuild

Carbs are pretty easy to rebuild, but there are 2 things to remember. It has to be clean. The best way to get it clean is to soak it in a good commercial grade carb cleaner. The best cleaner usually has methylene chloride in it. The problem here is that the bucket of cleaner with the dipping tray is about $45 at NAPA. The stuff they sell is called Mac's carburetor cleaner. there are other ways to clean a carb, but this stuff is the best IMO. If you can find a shop that rebuilds carbs, they will usually soak yours for a few bucks.

Second, make sure you set all of the adjustments per the instructions that come with the kit. Many people get intimidated by rebuilding a carb, but if you take your time and make sure everything is clean, which includes all of the fuel and air metering passages, then it really isn't a hard project at all. I also recommend the Echlin carb kits that NAPA sells. Their gaskets seem to be higher quality than a lot of the other kits out there.

Chris

Hi Steve,

is a rebuild if I purchase a kit?

The Motorcraft carbs are some of the easiest to rebuild. Make note of where, what position and what direction all linkage, springs, clips and checkballs are installed. Sometimes these things will jump out at you and they can be very hard to find. And, if you didn't see where/how they where installed... Ouch!

Remove all rubber and plastic parts before cleaning. Some may need to be reused and the cleaning solvents will damage them. Not all parts are included in the rebuild kits. Get a good quality kit, Motorcraft, Echlin and Carter are the ones I use. (For Holley, I use Holley. Too many bad/wrong gaskets in other kits.)

If you should buy a bucket of carb cleaner, _Do Not_ set it directly on the ground or floor. Space it up using wood blocks to allow air flow under the bucket, or else it will rust through in short order. (Can you say fumigation? How about HazMat?) If you have children and/or pets keep them away from it, far away.

Don't let too much time to elapse between disassembley/reassembley, unless you have a photographic memory or good photos, you may very well forget where all those parts go. Watch out for the reflection of light off of wet parts during disassembley, it can sometimes hide parts like checkballs. And there is at least one, in the accelerator pump circuit, under a screw holding the accelerator pump jets, under a steel rod, in the middle of the carb. (If memory serves. Its been a while.)

BigDave

Almost 40 years ago, my dad handed me 3 carbs and 3 kits. He said, "Here they are, rebuild them.", and walked away. These were old carbs he had sitting around and after I was done with them, he hung them up in his parts store on display. They were eventually sold, to people who needed those old carbs. (1bbl, 2bbl and a 4bbl, I don't remember what manufacturers.)

The carb is a Motorcraft 2BBL on a 1982 Ford F100 302 V8.

All good advice except I want to say you don't have to have a bucket of cleaner. It would be nice and all, but not needed. :/

An old pan and a spray can of Barryman's B-12, use the red plastic tube and squirt the passages clean. If you don't wear glasses figure out something to protect your eyes tho. Heck that stuff burns the soft skin next to the eye. :) A 1" wide natural bristle paint brush with the bristles cut off to 1" long (use dikes) works like a champ too.

It ain't that big of a deal, ok? :)

The only thing that really is bad when working on carbs is not securing the float's pivot. BTDT. :/ There's been twice when others said... "I rebuilt the carb now it's flooding so bad it won't run, could you take a look at it?" And my screw up was when I changed the main jets and got in too big of a hurry to get going again. :/

"takes me longer when i get in a hurry" :)

I'm guessing yours has got a "power valve" and you might want to modify the carb's action with a different value of vacuum actuated power valve (in the kit already). Where you at? ...and do you go over mountain passes or stay at the same elevation or live high and go low every once in a while? ...or what?

On mine, I completely eleminated the power valve.

Alvin in AZ

An old pan and a spray can of Barryman's B-12, use the red plastic tube and squirt the passages clean. If you don't wear glasses figure out something to protect your eyes tho. Heck that stuff burns the soft skin next to the eye. :) A 1" wide natural bristle paint brush with the bristles cut off to 1" long (use dikes) works like a champ too.

It ain't that big of a deal, ok? :)

The only thing that really is bad when working on carbs is not securing the float's pivot. BTDT. :/ There's been twice when others said... "I rebuilt the carb now it's flooding so bad it won't run, could you take a look at it?" And my screw up was when I changed the main jets and got in too big of a hurry to get going again. :/

"takes me longer when i get in a hurry" :)

I'm guessing yours has got a "power valve" and you might want to modify the carb's action with a different value of vacuum actuated power valve (in the kit already). Where you at? ...and do you go over mountain passes or stay at the same elevation or live high and go low every once in a while? ...or what?

On mine, I completely eleminated the power valve.

Alvin in AZ

This was about the best advice I've ever seen handed out on a usenet thread. Nice job to all.

Cool, you can set the carb up yourself for best performance with no compromises. Go to the library and check out a carburator book, you might have to get the library to borrow one from somewhere else but that's their problem not yours. ;)

The number on the power valve is the vacuum at which it "switches".

My problem was climbing mountains and having trouble in 3rd gear and having to shift down to second sometimes. As an experiment I temporarily defeated the "full power circuit" (it enriches the mixture at wide open throttle) and flew over the passes in 4th gear after that and I'm not kidding about the huge difference! It was starving for air and getting more fuel instead, so it was as if I was choking it when I opened the thottle. Anyway, so my setup is a compromise but works best for me.

On my Ford 2100 2V (2V equals 2 ventury?) a screw-in vacuum actuated power valve is what-controls-when the "full power circuit" kicks in. There isn't one on my carb anymore. ;)

And then there's the main jet size that controls the mixture for the "middle or main circuit" and "low speed circuit" jets to experiment too that controls the just-off-idle mixture... carburators are cool. :)

Alvin in AZ