Speaking from 60-something years of rebuilding carburetors, I've come to believe that very few people spend enough time cleaning a carburetor before reassembling it. A carburetor is really a pretty simple device- - -just a casting with a bunch of precision-drilled holes, so unless it's been on the business end of a sledgehammer, there's not a great deal to go wrong with it. The trick is to get those holes CLEAN! At one time, there were chemicals available that could soften the deposits, and high pressure air could then be used to dislodge them. Nor so these days! The environmental wackos have outlawed anything that has much of a chance of doing an effective job of cleaning a carburetor. Jon (Carb King), our resident carburetor guru has come up with an alternative- - - - -boiling water and dishwashing detergent. Dismantle the carb, boil the parts in a strong detergent solution for a while, and follow up with a rinse in clean boiling water. Then use a needle-point air nozzle and blow an outrageous volume of air through every hole to clear out the deposits the detergent softened up. Reassemble the carb and make all the assembly adjustments needed to put it back into as close as possible to "new" condition. The above process should put around 90% of the carbs you encounter back into acceptable running shape, certainly better than some offshore piece of junk. Good luck!
Jerry
Thanks very much for your input! I certainly can't claim anything like 60 years experience, but I have brought a couple of carbs back from the dead successfully and I thought I got this one pretty well cleaned and put back together as well... Yet still it won't play nice. The boiling water trick I haven't tried, might have to give that one a go.
I'm not giving up on the original carb just yet, but I'm still interested in those chinese knockoffs. The online reviews actually do seem overall positive which is surprising to me as I too would have assumed they are utter garbage, and yet people seem to have them up and running on various models of cars straught out of the box. I mean... If all of them were [censored], surely that would reflect on the comments and reviews online? So How come an amazon carb seller kan get a +4 star rating on their products from several hundred independent buyers if the product isn't at least worth the money? I find it intriguing in and of itself, and even if I would manage to get my original carb up and running I am tempted to get one of these knockoffs an s see for myself what it's like. Might be surprisingly good, or expectedly crap. But one never knows without trying...
