 Previous Page |
 80 Elky Home |
 |  |
Rebuilding the Quadrajet
(and converting to an Edelbrock)
The junkyard carburetor ran about like junk, so we decided to rebuild it. Here's what we started with.
A Q-jet, some carb cleaner, a rebuild kit, Doug Roe's book and the most important item, the fine adjustment tool. (BFH)
The book is called "Rochester Caburetors" by Doug Roe, published by HPBooks. Its ISDN number is 0-89586-301-4 and retails for $16.95 US.
This book was ABSOLUTLEY invaluable in doing the rebuild. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to rebuild or learn about quadrajet carbs.
We're about to take the airhorn off.
Top view of the carb with the airhorn bolts removed.
We followed the instructions in Roe's book to disassemble the carb. Here we're removing the float and power piston...which was completely frozen up. No wonder it ran badly.
We're about to remove the throttle body.
We labeled all the parts and put them in bags for later reassembly.
Could you make that check out to "Cash?"
We let the parts soak in solvent overnight to loosen any crud and varnish.
The bottom of the float body You can see the plugs that will need to be epoxied to prevent leaking.
The plugs were sealed with JB-Weld.
Here's the throttle body after cleaning. It was a MESS before.
The underside of the air horn...it's a lot cleaner, too.
The throttle body and float body are assembled with the float, needle and seat and primary metering rods re-installed The gasket is on and it's ready for the accellerator pump and air horn.
The airhorn is back on and it's just about all back together.
Steve's installing the secondary metering rods and hanger.
The carb was then installed on the Elky. We primed it with a teeny bit of gas and it started right up. It ran VERY poorly for longer than I expected and I was just about to start tweeking on the idle misture screws when it cleared up at began to run fairly well except for the choke. I guess it just needed to work the air bubbles out of its tummy....sorta.
Well, it didn't run very well or very long.
After beating our heads against a q-jet wall and getting them all bloody, Steve and I went to a street rod show.
Out of all the Chevy small block motors there, 80 percent of them had Edelbrock carbs. (and not a single Q-jet.)
When I asked people about the Edelbrocks they said that it was the best thing they had ever done for their cars.
I bought one less than an hour later.
Steve's connecting the fuel line to the new carb.
Doesn't it look great...all shiny and new? And it runs great.
I had some trouble with the choke at first. It took forever to open completely and still wouldn't allow the secondaries to open. I found out that I couldn't use the stock choke wire and had to use a wire spliced in from the windshield wiper motor.
Click here for more info on how I did this.
The choke works wonderfully now and it only took about 20 minutes to adjust the whole carb.
Next page: More Modifications.
| Previous Page |
80 Elky Home |
| |