Welcome to Stovebolt!
I would suggest first to detail what is happening; maybe some here could offer some testing tidbits to refute your thought that the carburetor is the culprit.
MANY ignition issues are diagnosed as carburetor issues.
As an example, if the plates in the distributor are "frozen" from non-use, and the distributor will not advance; the engine will not increase RPM, and may stall.
I would concur with all here who have suggested trying to troubleshoot your original carburetor first.
Just one thing to consider: Even if the Chinese knockoff is the finest carburetor ever made (it isn't!), what happens if you get a bad tank of gas and need to rebuild the carburetor? Pretty sure the folks that sold you the carburetor would be happy to sell you another carburetor, but not a kit!
I have had some sent to me for rebuilding, and even if I still rebuilt carbs; the machine work that would be necessary would be worth more than buying another DOZEN of the imitation carburetors.
As to parts for your original: the U.S. has sent 1000's of vehicles to NATO countries. Maybe look for a European vendor of military surplus parts.
Again, welcome!
Jon
Thank you very much Jon, and thank you so much for your input! I really appreciate it!
I will try my best to elaborate:
First of all, I am in no way doubting the fact that a properly functioning original carb would outperform any chinese copy every day of the week. That is a given. What I am pondering is simply, can I get my original carb back to functioning as well as a chinese copy for less money/labor than a chinese one costs. Will the performance of the chinese one be so bad that it doesn't even work, or will it work better than whatever the state my carb is currently in and can be after spending that money and work rebuilding it... It's mainly curiosity at this point.
Secondly, I have go the engine "running", but not well. For lack of a better word, it is extremely temperamental... I'm having to really work with both throttle and choke to try and maintain some kind of life from it, and she's sputtering and shooting from both the carb and the exhaust... I've had it running like this for long enough to work up a decent engine temp, and yet it still won't run properly. Hope this makes some form of sense, if not apologies for my poor explanation...
You raise a valid point about the longevity and maintenance of the copies, one I admit I had not considered.
I have tried sourcing parts locally to the best of my ability, and I'm not done looking. But for now, it's not looking good I'm afraid... I'll keep looking, and I will try to rebuild my original carb once more. But I'm still curious about how good or bad those cheap copies can be... As I said, might get one simply for the sake of testing it out. At the kind of money they can be had for, I don't really stand to lose much but might very well gain some interesting and useful knowledge in the process...
Thank you very much!
