Carbi Overhaul - To do..Or not to do.

what sort of vehicle is the carby of.
i work at the carby centre in bendigo and never charged any one nearly that much for a carby.
you could freight it to bendigo and back recoed for around $400 depending on what sort it is.
ps i only work at the carby centre but as a mechanic and dont do carbys if i dont have to because there a pain in the butt i leave it to the boss.
cheers

I am no mechanic but in all the years of having cars with carb's, I never had to get one cleaned. I have stripped them down myself and they have always been clean. The main problems that you get is wear in the throttle spindles and that is probably why the cost of an overhaul is so much. At the end of the day, are you going to save $800 worth of petrol over the next 2 years if you get the carb done, I very much doubt it.

If the engine is running OK and the fuel consumption is average for the make and model, leave it alone is my advice.

However is the fuel consumption is real bad or the engine is not running right, eliminate the electrics first, then look at the card. You can do other damage if you are getting too little or too much fuel (melted pistons - too lean or excessive bore wear - too rich).

Also if you have had water in the carb, it will need cleaning as the body of the carb causes a white flaky stuff that clogs jets.

For $800, you could probably damn near buy new Weber, Holley, or whatever carb.

Stevesub

The gas is introduced to the engine via a mixer that is seperate from the carb and the only part of the carb that is used is the throttle butterfly. In my experience, most carbs are easy to take apart and put back together again and if you clean out the jets, use comprssed air, not wire as you run the risk of making the jets bigger if you poke stuff through them to clean them.

I once had a car on gas with a carb and one problem I had was the float had a hole in the bottom due to sitting on the bottom of the carb with no fuel in it. The car ran real rough and used heaps of fuel. Luckily it was an older car with a brass float so I soldered it up and had no more problems.

Yep. The gas mixer is either on top of the carb or between the carb and manifold, depending on the type. The only part of the carb that is used is the trottle body and throttle. The rest of the carb is for petrol. ALso check the choke on the carb to make sure that it is open when the engine is hot. If this is stuck closed, you will use too much gas and petrol.

As I said earlier I am not a mechanic but had a gas car in NZ 20 years ago and that is my only experience with one. Maybe the gas regulator is at fault. There is probably a mixture adjustment screw on the regulatorr or the line between the mixer and regulator. I am not going to tell you how I adjusted my mixture and got it right becuase if you get it wrong, you may damage something - best left to the experts.

Just make sure that your ignition is top notch as that is where most of my problems were, especially plug leads.

Good Luck

Stevesub

The choke should be in the open condition when hot and the revs should be normal idle 500 to 800rpm. My guess is the probllem is with the gas stuff ie the regulator as the mixer in the old days was a aluminium ring with a hole in the side with a pipe in the hole to let the gas in. This is a very simplified version of what it is but there should be no moving parts and nothing to go wrong. However the regulator is another story and that I know not much about except there are bits inside that can give trouble.

Time for a gas specalist if it were me.

The joys of owning an alternative fuelled car. Go the diesel, especially my Troopy. All basic and simple.

Stevesub

Last reply for the night.

If it is bad on gas and petrol, must be something common - ie ignition, valves, pistons. Not much else unless there is an air leak into the manifold or maybe one of the tubes that ends up at the manifold.

Do a compression check which will eliminate the valves and pistons - maybe.

Getting near time to spend some dough on a specialist but a carb specalist is not what you want if gas is giving you problems as well as petrol.

Goodnight

Stevesub

contact me on email and we will have a chat dont want to take up to much room on here.
swingers@iprimus.com.au.
cheers

I had my 3f carby done 3 years ago in Perth and it cost $280-$300 including the vaccum secondary thing on the side,fitting and testing for 4 gases.

Get out the yellow pages and find carb rebuilders and ring through them until you get common sense prices.

Justin,

Poor fuel consumption is considered normal on 3F Landcruisers, especially on gas.
The numbers I remember are best figures of 15mpg on petrol and 10mpg on gas. This translates to about 19-25 litres/100km.

Usual things that make it worse are fat tyres, low tyre pressures, roofrack, too much extra barwork and weight, etc etc and a heavy right foot.

Blocked air filter, dragging rear brakes, and few other bits mentioned above are worth excluding. But in my experience, the carby would rarely be the problem.

Cheers
phil