In the mid-1970s I and a safety engineer inspected a carburetor rebuilding shop here in Dallas...the largest in DFW. They had suffered 2 serious fires and we needed to find out why (we insured them). I won't bore you with all details but suffice to say the two guys "rebuilding" Rochester B and B variants just took them apart and tossed the pieces on a metal cart sitting between them which was taken to a dunk pit (uncovered...which turned out to be the cause of the fires). The carburetors had been sent in from auto parts stores as exchange carbs. The parts would soak overnight in the pit and the next day would be spent re-assembling them and labeling as "professionally rebuilt" carburetors. Occasionally a lady would come by and put them in boxes.

When I asked the supervisor where all the tags were and how they kept the parts matched, he looked at me over the lit cigarette he had dangling out of his mouth and said "Hunh? Matching parts? Tags? We can't worry about that." In a wire basket on the table where a "rebuilder" was working were a bunch of misc parts including floats, idle screws, interior pieces, etc. I asked what those were for and he said "well, we do our best but sometimes the guys work so fast to make their quota they overlook things so whatever's left just goes into those small baskets in case they need it later." He laughed and said "Wouldn't make sense to start opening up rebuilt carbs to see where you forgot the float or something. Somebody out there will return it when it doesn't work."

Hopefully rebuilders in other parts of the country did a better job. If a Rochester B, BC, etc ever made it to this place there was no way in the world it was going to remain matched and original.

~ Jon
1952 1/2 ton with 1959 235 | T5 with 3.07 rear end