cudak888
Well-Known Member
This story came to mind, and I thought I'd share it. It was with an A-Body, but who cares?
A few years back, when I first got my '69 Valiant, I ran into an intermittent crank-no-start situation when the 225 Slanty was warmed up. In retrospect, the problem was painfully obvious, but I was fixated on the idea that the problem was more complex than it was.
At any rate, I'd already spent a few days, off and on, playing with the timing, checking the ignition wiring, and every time I thought it was fixed...it wasn't.
So I finally wind up taking the carb off; I think it was to rebuild it. I hadn't ever done the Holley 1920 before, and played it real safe - didn't touch anything that didn't need to be touched during the quick rebuild.
So I got it back on, tried it a bit, and the problem was still there. So, after some fiddling, I pulled the carb off again. I don't remember why; maybe it was to install a thicker spacer. But that was immaterial to what happened next.
See, by this point, I was already frustrated and my thoughts scattered over what I was actually trying to do. So I did whatever I did to the carburetor on my run to the workbench, came back to the car, and tried starting it.
Vroom! On the lightest turn of the key too!
Then I got out, looked at my little Slant Six in triumph, and that's when it hit me:
I hadn't put the carburetor back on it.
After a few seconds of standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what alternate reality I was in - one where fuel supply was apparently irrelevant to the internal combustion engine - I shut the car down, and realized that it must have had a pretty ideal A/F mix just from the existing gasoline in the manifold and the ambient air getting sucked in through the single-barrel intake port.
And so that's my story of how throwing away my carburetor made the car run better.
Joke aside, the real problem was that the choke was set to "Montana winter" levels of richness for South Florida. As I said, painfully obvious. (But not when you start assuming - and looking for - a complicated solution from the start).
Car runs great now, but that little 1920 is a pain-in-the-*** leaker (I know the warpage can be fixed), and I've never been able to get it not to want to bog or shut down on hard acceleration - though I never did try playing as much as I could with the accelerator pump shot. The 1920's bowl annoys me enough that I'd rather try the Carter.
Ironically, I haven't found any other stories on Google of someone trying to run a car without a carb.
-Kurt
A few years back, when I first got my '69 Valiant, I ran into an intermittent crank-no-start situation when the 225 Slanty was warmed up. In retrospect, the problem was painfully obvious, but I was fixated on the idea that the problem was more complex than it was.
At any rate, I'd already spent a few days, off and on, playing with the timing, checking the ignition wiring, and every time I thought it was fixed...it wasn't.
So I finally wind up taking the carb off; I think it was to rebuild it. I hadn't ever done the Holley 1920 before, and played it real safe - didn't touch anything that didn't need to be touched during the quick rebuild.
So I got it back on, tried it a bit, and the problem was still there. So, after some fiddling, I pulled the carb off again. I don't remember why; maybe it was to install a thicker spacer. But that was immaterial to what happened next.
See, by this point, I was already frustrated and my thoughts scattered over what I was actually trying to do. So I did whatever I did to the carburetor on my run to the workbench, came back to the car, and tried starting it.
Vroom! On the lightest turn of the key too!
Then I got out, looked at my little Slant Six in triumph, and that's when it hit me:
I hadn't put the carburetor back on it.
After a few seconds of standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what alternate reality I was in - one where fuel supply was apparently irrelevant to the internal combustion engine - I shut the car down, and realized that it must have had a pretty ideal A/F mix just from the existing gasoline in the manifold and the ambient air getting sucked in through the single-barrel intake port.
And so that's my story of how throwing away my carburetor made the car run better.
Joke aside, the real problem was that the choke was set to "Montana winter" levels of richness for South Florida. As I said, painfully obvious. (But not when you start assuming - and looking for - a complicated solution from the start).
Car runs great now, but that little 1920 is a pain-in-the-*** leaker (I know the warpage can be fixed), and I've never been able to get it not to want to bog or shut down on hard acceleration - though I never did try playing as much as I could with the accelerator pump shot. The 1920's bowl annoys me enough that I'd rather try the Carter.
Ironically, I haven't found any other stories on Google of someone trying to run a car without a carb.
-Kurt
