Carb rebuild nightmare!

I went ahead and rebuilt the 34 carb last night. The rebuild itself went fine, the nightmare was the condition of the carb itself. The acel pump chamber had debris in it, the vac retard passages were almost completely clogged, the vac choke pulloff diaphram was shot, the air bypass screw had the wrong O ring, the volume screw O ring was damaged, and one stud was stripped out. On top of this, the carb base flange was warped: you could set the carb on a flat surface and slide a dime under it. Because of this, the base gasket was partially pulled in and leaking, and guess what? The passage for the vac advance circuit is right down there, so I was not getting enough (if any) vacuum for the distributor.

I would normally throw out a carb this bad, but since it was a genuine VW, I bought the appropriate metal file and went to work on it.
It took about an hour to make the base straight, but now it can sit flat on the bare metal intake flange without a gasket. I remounted the carb on the engine with one dry gasket (no RTV) and it sealed perfectly. Had to let it sit and go to sleep (me, not the car), then tuned it when I got home from work. Only thing better than a nice clean carb is one that works right, and this puppy is finally functioning. Took it out for a drive and there is no hesitation or flat spot anywhere, and the throttle response is nice and smooth. It was running so well that I drove to Inkster to do some work on my mother's 72 Eldorado parade car (for sale if anyone is interested), then drove to Ecorse Michigan and back to Livonia. No problems, starts immediately now, even when you park it for a few minutes then get back in. Matter of fact, traffic was very heavy and I had few opportunities to pull out of a gas station, so I let it rip and got wheelspin through first and barked the tires on the 1-2 shift. Don't be too impressed though, it's got skinny tires

I'm lovin' it!

Last edited by Altema (2009-08-07 16:34:26)