I truly love my car. I've been having a problem with the car surging again. Not in the same way as before, that was a vacuum leak, but with what feels like a too lean situation. But this problem only evidences itself going up a good hill, and in Pittsburgh, we have those in abundance. You can open the throttle up and the problem vanishes till you take your foot back out of it. Sometimes its been so bad that its stalled out on me, fun fun.

So my questions are thus:

1) Would a carb rebuild help this? If so, where do I get a good kit?

2) Any diagnostic procedures that I can do to confirm or deny the lean condition?

3) Where do I get a richer jet for this thing?


Pertinent Info; '71 225 with a 1920 Holley, auto, in a Valiant. 77k miles on the engine and tranny.

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The old white brick

Well things have gone from annoying to generally pissy. Its a good day, not only is it cold outside again, my car won't run. It'll start and idle roughly, this is after dying 3 or 4 times, then stall when put into gear. At this point, I'm just too tired to worry about it. I think I'm going to start saving up for an EFI conversion, selling VW should help start the process and the wife said I could have a little of the refund we just got. So we'll see how it all goes.

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The old white brick

Whoah, there, feller! There's a vast amount of real estate between here (car won't run right) and there (EFI). Carbureted cars can and do run correctly when in proper repair and tune. You've got something the matter with your carburetor—OK, that needs fixing. But do you really intend not to drive the car until you've got the several thousand bucks' worth of parts and labour it'll take to put together and tune an EFI system?

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

No not really, I was just depressed this morning. Life has a way of doing that every once in a while to me. But I don't mind thinking about all that fun stuff, especially since it gives my bored brain something fun to think about and ponder. But back to the car. Possible solutions for the carb?

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The old white brick

Has the carb been touched at all since you got the car? Is it a grimy original (good!) or a sandblasted "reman" (bad!)?

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Its a nice grimy original, all that's ever been done to it is to adjust the idle speed when I adjusted my valves then adjusted back. I think that we reset the idle mixture screw as well.

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The old white brick

Do a good rebuild on the carb. Does your engine have an EGR valve? What about an OSAC valve? How about a heated air inlet system?

Reed's right, your first order of business is a careful carb disassembly, cleaning, inpection and—if it's in rebuildable condition—rebuild.

Your 1971 model would not have an EGR valve or an OSAC valve. Thermostatic air cleaner ("heated air system"), yes.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Disassembly, inspection, cleaning and possible rebuild. Got it. Next question then becomes, where do i get a good rebuild kit. I know that Standard-Hygrade apparently makes a good kit. Is there another brand that people have found to be reputable.

Cleaning: SSD has said that Berryman's makes a good carb cleaner, I'll go down to the parts store and see what they have there. Amazingly they carry Berryman's. Makes me happy.

Disassembly: I'll take my time and take pictures so that I can put it all back together again.

Inspection: other than spotting obviously broken pieces, is there anything I should watch out for?

As far as I can tell the heated air system works.

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The old white brick

By now, the Hygrade kits may (or may not) be the same as all the other mass-market crud. AFLA Products makes excellent kits, but they do not sell to individuals, only to carburetor rebuilders—I'm in the middle of finding us a reliable pipeline for those kits, but it'll probably take much longer than you've got, so go ahead and try to chase down a Hygrade kit.
Excellent.
If you have not yet followed the instructions in this post, I cannot strongly enough recommend that you do so!
Wear, warpage, corrosion, prior abuse. You really need at least the factory service manual, and preferably all three books in the above linked post.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Right, I'll get on the petersen book asap, have relatives that can get books at a discount, which is always a plus. I have the FSM for my year, also have for my last /6 which is but a memory.

So Rebuild kits, have to search through the posts and see what others have mentioned. I'll run down and get the Berryman's tonight, the faster I get this done the quicker my wife gets her car back.

I'll see if my mechanic can order a kit from them. thank god for family friends.

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The old white brick

I'm fairly certain I'm too young (20) to have ever seen a "good" carb kit, but I've used several Walker kits, and a Borg Warner as well. Both seemed acceptable to me...

Well I know for certain that its the carb right now. I had a spare 1920 in the garage that I had forgotten about, swapped it on and the car is running fine, maybe a tad rich at idle, but it'll work till i can get the other one rebuilt and retuned.

On a note, there is no bowl vent tube coming off the carb I just put on. Am I going to blow up?

Walker, and Borg and Werner, ok then, I'll keep them in mind.

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The old white brick

You will not blow up, but in that case cap the hose that runs up from the fuel pump body to where it used to connect to the original carb.

I would not agree with the recommendation for Walker kits. BorgWarner maybe, if it passed a very close and careful inspection. Chinese cràp is everywhere these days, including in a lot of consumer-grade auto parts.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Plug the hole and avoid the crap. Hmm, that sounds so very wrong.

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The old white brick