Carburetors II

While I wait for rear axle parts (on order from LBCarCo), I did some figurative damage to the carburetors.

There really isn't much to the Skinner Union (SU) carburetor.  You can read all about it at Wikipedia here.  I can't do better to describe it, other than that I have two of them at 1.25" inlet diameter (HS2).  It really is an ingenious design with few faults, and when kept up are very reliable.

I also have a set of HS4 (1.5" inlet) carburetors for rebuilding some day.  More powerrrr, Captain!

Here's what I started with.  (Some reassembly was performed for photographic purposes.)

And here's where I ended up:

It really didn't take long to strip them down--about a half hour.  As you can see, they are quite simple in construction.

I will need:

• New jets (the things with the tubes sticking out of them)
• New floats and float chamber gaskets
• New float chamber spacers
• New fuel lines
• New carburetor to manifold gaskets
• Retaining clips for the jet actuators
• New springs (maybe--I'm pretty sure I did what I did to them on purpose)

I was hoping to get away with not having to buy jets because they are so expensive, but that would have been foolish as one fell apart while removing it.  Believe it or not, the floats are original and still float (we all float down here, Georgie!), but I figure it's time to stop pressing my luck.

One thing I won't need are float chamber needles.  The float works by floating (um, yeah) in the chamber to regulate the flow of fuel from the pump into the jet.  When the chamber fills up, the float closes a little needle valve to stop the flow from the pump.  (The front chamber has a bypass to send fuel to the rear carburetor.)  It's a low pressure system, maybe 3 psi, so this works very well.  Unfortunately, these needles wear rather quickly.  

In my case, I don't have them.  I have a replacement that uses ball bearings instead.  They work great (still do) and won't wear out.  They are called "Grose-Jets", probably after some guy named Grose.

Anyhow, lots of cleaning to do and then reassembly once I find some coin for parts.  I already blew what little I squirreled away, so I gotta sell more stuff.  I am reaching the point where the parts I need will either be really cheap or really expensive.  Unfortunately, I need lots of the cheap parts, which gets expensive (like every single piece of rubber on the car, and tons of nuts and bolts and funky little fasteners you can't buy locally).