Thread: Carbs
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brianradams brianradams is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 6
Stick with the Zeniths, especially since your problem seems fairly simple to solve. Even if they required complete rebuild I'd put the money into the Zeniths rather than Weber or Solex. A complete set of Webers with manifolds/adapters and filters will cost around $700-$900.

I am running Webers on my '59 Super, but only because they came on the car. I don't have a set of Zeniths to rebuild. But I have rebuilt the Webers, am on my second set now due to a fire (more on that later) and have come to love them. They typically come with 28mm venturis, which are just fine for a stock 1600. If you go big bore, head porting, cam, etc. you can go up to 34mm I think in the 40s, but it might be better to get 44IDFs instead. As someone said, the carbs don't produce power, and if you get the venturis and jets set up right on Webers, they are no better ot worse than Zeniths, just a lot easier to swap jets in/out, you can do it in 5 minutes by just removing the air cleaners.

Another reason to stick with the Zeniths is they have flame arrestors for air cleaners, those metal cannisters. The K&Ns typically put on Webers are prone to ignition from any kind of backfire. I found out the hard way by letting my main fuel tank run dry, switching over to reserve at highway speed, waiting for the normal stuttering to stop as the float bowls refilled, only to find this time that the car continued to run crappy even after the reserve kicked in. I managed to get it home (2 miles) and when I stopped the car smoke was rising out of the engine cover vent. I popped the cover and found a K&N burned beyond recognition and still burning. Grabbed a fire extinguisher and saved the car, but molten carb metal had gotten down to the intake valves. I had to pull the head and clean it up before I could get any compression on that head, decided to just do a valve job on both sides since I had it apart. Zenith air cleaners are far less likely to ever have this problem.

Also, if you go with Webers, a VERY common problem is that the linkage to the throttle levers on the carbs is asymmetrical, i.e. the descending pushrod going to the left carb is shorter than the rod to the right (passenger side) carb. The right rod reaches farther rearward than the left due to the cylinder stagger (and resulting carb stagger.)

The two descending rods must be at the same angle relative to, say, the vertical face of the fan housing, and the ball studs on the carb's throttle levers must be the same horizontal distance from the fan housig.

Pointing the ball studs towards each other is a first step (left stud point rearward, right points forward) towards closing the gap, but on my 356 there still was a net 1.5-inch offset. The fix is to stick 3/4" threaded standoffs underneath the ball studs, essentially making them longer. This closes the 1.5" offset and puts the descending rods at the exact same angle/length.

The proof of all this is the Synchrometer readings. Try balancing the carbs just off idle @1500 rpm. Then open it up to, say, 3500 rpm and notice how the left side carb is drawing a lot more than the laggard right carb. When the left carb is against the stop, the right carb's lever will still be several mm off it's stop!

No Weber installation that does not equalize the linkage properly will ever deliver full performance. You won't believe what a difference it makes.

Brian Adams
Reno
'59 Super Coupe
Old 06-21-2004, 12:22 PM
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