Hey guys, I have some quick carb questions and hopefully someone can shed some light on this weird problem I'm having. I've got my '67 with a 327 in it. Pretty much a stock motor, save for the Weiand intake and Edelbrock 650 Performer carb. Now the problem, I think, is related to fuel delivery. When I fire up the car in the morning cold, it fires up on less than a crank. I warm it up and drive, and the car runs perfect. I can run it all morning and drive it around at normal operating temp (190-200), and it'll still run lovely. Now, if I shut off the car for a little while after it's hot, and come back out to it, the car takes quite a few turns to fire up, and sometimes firing up is accompanied by some nice fuel smoke. After that, the car kinda runs like crap. It'll be hesitant and have a rougher idle than normal, and I even get a slight muffled exhaust sound. I think the carb is slowly leaking fuel while it sits there warm and I'm flooding out. Maybe I need some new jets in this thing? I have whatever stock jets Edelbrock puts in their refurbished 650's, but they might just be the wrong jets for running in humid, sea level Florida. Anybody have any suggestions?

 

You're leaking fuel but not like you think. Heat is causing you problems. Either heating up the fuel in the fuel line/pump and causing the pressure to build, force the inlet valve open and flood out the carb OR....... you're actually boiling the fuel in the carb float bowls and causing all sorts of weird metering problems.

If you had a hard mechanical problem with the carb you'd run like crap pretty much all the time, not just on a hot restart.

Solution: keep the heat outta the fuel. Phenolic gasket under the carb to keep engine from conducting into it and route the fuel line away from any hot areas (header, etc.) Start there and see how it goes. Most of the time these simple changes help enough that most people don't see any reason to go any further.

A hot restart with a carb will always be a little different that just idling on a warmed up motor. Idle will be a little lower and might be a little rough, but it should basically clear up and run very close to normally within about 20 seconds or so. The intake manifold gets very hot when you shut off the motor and it takes a little while for it's temp to re-stabilize aftera hot restart.

 

I guess tie wrapping the fuel line to the heater hose doesn't help, huh? I'm off to buy a gasket and reroute my fuel hose now, I'll let you know how it goes

 

Well, the spacer between the carb and the intake manifold worked like a charm! The car fires up on half a turn now and my carb is warm to the touch while my engine is at normal operating temperature. The exhaust even has a slightly deeper tone to it, prolly due to the extra 1/2" of space between the carb and the intake manifold. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

You're welcome. We're all here to help eachother enjoy our cars- not be frustrated and confused by them. If you keep coming to the board you're guaranteed to see a question that you know the answer to- so help 'em out when your turn comes. EVERYONE, no matter their expereince level, knows some little piece of inbformation about a part of a car that another person is dying to know.