Carburetor rebuild 1957 Bird

[Buckley]

My carburetor on my 57 started leaking some fuel so I decided to get it rebuilt. I took it to a carb specialist to insure it was done correctly. After rebuild the car would not idle, and was running very lean. They took it apart again and checked everything out, reassembled and same thing. Tried a different rebuild kit and same thing. The mechanic had another Holly that was off another old ford, tried that on my car and it ran perfect. We also ran a pressure test to make sure there was not a vacuum leak in the manifold and found no leak. We are about 15 hours into this thing and I am ready to buy a new carb, and was wondering if any of the engine gurus out there have any advice on what my problem might be. Not looking forward to spending $700.00 on a new carb but my mechanic is out of ideas. Thanks

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[Dale Leonard]

Sounds like your carb specialist ain't much of a specialist. It sounds like while he cleaned the carb he stopped up some of the passages inside the carburetor. There are some very tiny passages in the idle circuit that are easy to stop up. For idling they exit right at the point in the venturi where the butterflies start to open. If they stop up it will not idle. It can be fixed. Where are you located.

 

[Buckley]

Grass Valley California, Northern CA. between Sacramento and Truckee/Tahoe

 

[Dale Leonard]

If you was closer I would try to help you out but I am in Florida. I do my own rebuilds and seldom have any problems. Hope you find someone to fix yours. You will need to remove the idle jets and clean those passages really good and also clean the air bleed passages. Good luck.

 

[Buckley]

I do appreciate the advice. Thanks

 

[Dale Leonard]

If you have a sonic cleaner, you can try putting the disassembled body in it and cleaning it that way. Also you can take a small piece of stranded electrical wire and take one small strand of it and use it to hand drill through the small orfices in the idle circuit to open them up. The copper will not damage the passages and works 99% of the time. Just a couple of ideas to try to help you out.

 

[BigClay]

If your carb is one of the “tall” holleys, I would recommend replacing with a new 600cfm Holley.

 

[tomtalker]

Teapot rebuild or new manifold and new style carb which do think is better?

 

[paul5456]

tomtalker - The later manifold and carb should be better, but to use the new carb you have to change the distributor as the teapot carb has the wrong vacuum signal for later distributor

The teapot is a good carb as long as it it rebuilt properly. The average rebuilder does not know these carbs and usually screw them up. If you want to rebuild the teapot, get back to us and I can provide a reference.

In the future, you should always start a new thread rather than piggy back on an old one.