• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

30 minutes of clean up and much better

Share this page

T

tdskip

Yoda
Country flag
Offline
Time to rebuild the carbs, and with all the money flying out the door on other tasks I decided to start rebuilding them myself.

All I did to the one on the right was the clean it well and then spend about 20 minutes with some compound on a polishing brush on a Dremel.

It needs more polishing still but I was pretty shocked at how well it cleaned up.

I think the carb body is going to be much more of a challenge simply due to the surface being more complex.

1974CarbRebuild6-19-0911.jpg
 
Tom,

Even if you have them professionally polished, you will still need to buff them up periodically. I had my originals apart back in the 90's and they aren't that bad at all, especially with the Buckeye advice available. I did get Jeff Palya to do my triples.
 
I would have loved to use Jeff, and I'll probably mess them up bad enough to need to send them off anyway LOL.

What do you use to polish yours Paul?
 
Tom, I like Mother's Billet polish. It comes in small jar with a large price ($14), can be found at Pep Boys but is better than others I've tried (even the metal polish sold by Griot's Garage).
Bob
 
Ditto on the Mother's. Great stuff. A polish job will last for many months......
 
You can do it. There's really not much to it and you have the most noticeable part polished. So for about 100 dollars vs what a pro charges including the time they spend shinning them up, you'll come out way ahead dollar-wise.
A couple of things to keep in mind. Unless the needles are bent, don't bother replacing them. They are tapered and can be adjusted in the RARE event that there's any wear.
Avoid the Grose jets
And get new Throttle Bypass Diaphrams (Moss # 365-745) for about 12 bucks apiece.
VB sells a nice rebuild kit sans the TBV diaphram. Their #3-953 @ about 30 bucks each.
And when replacing the air valve diaphrams, be aware of the locating tabs on the diaphrams and the corresponding slots on the air valve and the carb body.
One more thing; if you do replace the throttle shaft bushings try to save the brass caps. Even though they are included in the kit, new ones may not fit back over the bushings as well as the old ones.
Good luck and after you DIY you'll have a better understanding of what's going on in there. Oh yeah, do one at a time.
 
Thanks guys, and yes I do dig knowing how these things work.

Do the Throttle Bypass Diaphragms always need to be replaced, just a good practice?

Any ideas on how to polish the carb main body? Cone shaped buffer on a drill? Other/better ideas?
 
The TBV diaphrams get kind of brittle over time and loose flexibility. Have a look at yours; you might be ok for a while, but they have to be flexible to function properly.
 
Poolboy - I just checked the Throttle Bypass component on the carb I took apart (just one at a time - see guys, I can be trained) and sure enough it was tripped to heck.

I also backed the idle screw off and yep, that is why the throttle disk was letting daylight through.

Is this the right Moss part for the float bottom plug?

366-070 $9.95 PLUG, float chamber, nylon & brass C3337 thru 3771

Learning a bunch here guys - thanks!
 
Tom, if you're still awake, TRF has their carb rebuild kits as the deal of the day until 8:00 in the morning...
 
Hi David - thanks for the heads-up. I already have a rebuild kit, but that would have been a score! Thanks for passing it along.
 
If they're the original Throttle Bypass Diaphragms then they are just about always hard as a rock and likely holed through so take a look, they do improve the idle when they are working.
 
Wow, Tom!
Amazing what a little compound/Dremmel can do. Looks fantastic! I honestly didn't know the carbs could shine up so nicely...thought the drab, matte coloring was the way they were! :blush: I think I will give that a go!
 
Fuel pumps can be made to look really good too, but this was NOT done by me and my Dremel. You can see the screws in the shine of the bodies.

pumpkit009.jpg


pumpkit027.jpg


pumpkit036.jpg


pumpkit037.jpg
 
Assuming I get the carbs squared away the pump is next. You can get maybe 70% of the way to that shine by hand and with a Dremel, but nothing beats Jeff's process.
 
Tom,

That was done by Jeff Schlemmer at Advanced Distributors, using the same methods that he has available for the distributors that he rebuilds. The last batch were done by Jeff Palya at Micropolishing, LLC.
 
Back
Top