Some time ago I made the decision to try a Carter W-1 carburetor in place of the original first series Rochester ‘B’ that belongs on my truck because of the problems that plagued these early ‘B’s. I found a good core and spent the better part of a week learning about this Carter carb.
So after all this meticulous work it’s given me fits because it ran lean. I've been chasing a hesitation/stumble/lack of power with my
1950, 216 for more than a year now. The truck runs best when the choke is pulled out 3/8” to 1/2”. I was meticulous in the restoration of this W-1 carburetor so I really couldn’t understand why it performed so poorly.
In January I rebuilt another of the same model for a friend, and once again I spent several days soaking and checking every internal passage and adjustment and I gave him back a W-1 that performs just beautiful on his 1950, 216. Last week I swapped his carb for mine and lo and behold, it performs just perfectly on my engine.
So this week I did an autopsy on my W-1 684 to try to nail down the problem. I think I may have found it!
When I originally rebuilt mine I took pictures of all the jets and plugs to make sure that they all went back in the proper location. Today I noticed when I was removing the Nozzle Assembly that the Nozzle plug was actually a 122-47s Discharge Disk Check Assembly with the brass disk in it. After checking the hole I found that it is only .093” plus the fact that the flow is restricted by the brass disk. According to the shop manual the Nozzle Plug is supposed to have a .130” to .150” hole and of course I’m assuming that there is no restriction in it either. Apparently someone had been into this carb before (boy, what a surprise) and either lost or replaced by mistake, the Nozzle Plug with an Inlet Check Valve. Since it was the first W-1 that I’d worked on I never gave it a thought last year.
The Nozzle plug looks very much like the Inlet Check Valve so I figured I could simply remove the disk from that Inlet Check Valve and re-drill it to .150” to feed the Main Nozzle? It apparently has held the Main Nozzle in place so far since I’ve driven the truck for several thousand miles and other than it running lean it runs fine.
Here are a few pictures of the bad guy in the hi-speed circuit.
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/under_hood&page=5 So after several Rochesters, and a couple of Carters, I finally have a SWEET running 216. My test-drive this evening felt like I was driving a completely different truck. Idles smoother, accelerates smoothly nice and strong pull, no stumble, no hesitation, more power than I expected from a 216 with 60,000 miles on it. She popped up to 60mph just beautifully. But now I’m gonna have to start watching out for John Law with all this new found power at my fingertips.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
