what's in a 3a carb rebuild kit?

[dlb]

today i realized there is an easy way to tell if the fuel level is above or below the sight glass: hold the choke open and keep opening and closing the throttle until either the level comes into view on the glass, or you no longer see fuel squirting into the primary barrel. i did this and learned that peter was right, the fuel level was indeed above the sight glass. i'll take the top off and play with the float tomorrow.

[marlinh]

How's the troubleshooting coming? Haven't seen an update in a while...

[dlb]

slowly but surely, marlene. after playing with the carb i found that the fuel level was really inconsistent--sometimes at the low end of ok, sometimes way up above the glass, and i couldn't figure out a pattern to it so i decided to go ahead and rebuild the carb. however, once i removed the carb from the car i noticed some differences in the vacuum ports between it and the stock carb. it is still basically the same carb but it looks like it came from an automatic and has a few extra vac ports. a few of the ports have really small holes instead of the normal size, like the HAC port on the US cars vac advance cans. those smaller vac passages on the carb were on the ports going to the choke breaker diaphragm B and lower vac advance diaphragm. i'm not sure how it would affect those things but it seems like the restricted vac passages may not supply enough vac for the devices to work properly (although the choke breaker B has a 'jet' between it and the vac source which would essentially do the same thing) so i decided to keep things as stock as possible and rebuild my parts carb since it is the correct version of carb for this car, and take the few needed parts from the other one. i can't remember what was wrong with this carb except that the car ran like crap and died sometimes.

i got a rebuild kit and the parts were right but the instructions were for some carb i never heard of, a rochester or something. looks like it came on a bunch of pontiac stuff. i wound up going to BWD's website and got the correct instructions and took the aisin apart yesterday. i put all the parts on a few pieces of paper and numbered the parts according to the instructions. the bearings and springs and jets from the bowl are so tiny and easy to lose so i taped them all down to the paper.



close up of my high tech approach to keeping organized.



i looked into soaking the carb and learned that the buckets of soak stuff are REALLY expensive ($80 for 4 liters) so i called a local small engine repair shop and asked them for a cheaper viable alternative. the guy was really nice and helpful and suggested just buying a few cans of heavy duty carb cleaner spray, filling a bowl with that, and using that to soak the parts. he said 30 mins to an hour is usually enough, and then (he advised against this but said it works well) to fill another bowl with gasoline and dip the parts in there. he said that blowing parts out with compressed air can leave some cleaner behind and it's difficult to get it out once everything is reassembled, but dipping everything in gas gets rid of all the cleaner. i hope to get to all of this in the next week.

disassembling the carb has really heightened my 'glutton for punishment' love of carbs. learning the route of the gas and what each specific part does reinforced the simple, beautiful poetry of how these things work. carbs are nowhere near as reliable the the EFI systems of early 90's toyotas but they are so quirky and cool and wonderfully simple, just like the tercel itself. it's really a perfect match.

[Tercel__jon]

Ive had really good luck with the gallon can of chem-dip from walmart. Think it was like $20 for a gallon and it last forever! It will clean/dissolve pretty much anything thats not metal. It even comes with a little basket for holding the small things.

I love carbs. Amazing how they work.

[dlb]

finish rebuilding this carb and got it on the car today. ran crappy for a while so i messed with the fuel cut solenoids but only made things worse. put them back and looked elsewhere. found the carb base nuts i had done up were now not so tight. did them up again and things got better. adjusted the idle mixture and then it ran well. still have to try driving it while cold tomorrow to confirm that all is well with the carb but it drove great tonight.