The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Carter or Rochester?

I haven't priced Zenith 228s lately but it seems to me that would be a better option than Langdon's Pinto carbs. His setup isn't cheap either. YFs for a 216 would probably be cheaper and probably just as good.

Maybe I just got lucky years ago when I stumbled into a pair of 228s with the SAE #2 base on an Offy manifold. I put them on a 235 by slotting the carb bases and I also had to modify the gasket for the vacuum port. They have worked well for many years. No throttle lag or bog from over carburetion. The engine has Fenton headers, the 252 Crower cam discussed in another thread. Has lots of power and until recently got good mileage.

I did modify them long ago so the power valves would start to open at a lower vacuum by measuring the tension of ball point pen springs and cutting them down or stretching them (I no longer remember which). This worked just fine until we started having alcohol in all the gas and now the engine runs too lean. So I opened the main jet adjustment to compensate but the gas mileage has gone to haides. So now I'm thinking I need to go back to the original springs but they are in an envelope with a whole bunch of other springs and I don't know which were the originals. Sigh.

Anyways, the 216 sized Carters would probably do just fine too, especially with some other performance mods. I had a single YF on a 235which was a good carb but I put it on my girfriend's pickup when her Rochester cratered and I didn't get it back when we split up. That was forty years ago and I still regret it. I had a YF on a 50 Studebaker 170 champ that got 29-30 MPG on the road. In a pinch I put one of the 228s on it while I overhauled the YF and that cut the mileage almost in half. I was glad to get the YF back. I think they are really good carbs.