Carburettor Rebuild

Before I start, the main picture for this post, please ignore the split pins!! the ones in the new kit I used were crap, so these will get replaced with better ones.

Seems things are taking an age to get finished on this Land Rover, but things are getting done, albeit sometimes 2 or 3 times over. The last update was about the Carburettor Strip down, which was pretty simple, but resulted in a pile of tiny bits.

Putting it back together, surely would be simple. I bought a carb re-build kit, which has all the bits needed to rebuild, or so I thought. So lets get to it, and not necasseraly in the order things were done.

First off, the top and bottom parts are bolted together, with a gasket between them. One of the things everyone says is that these carbs over time warp.

Next was to start putting back all the new jets and bits and pieces. There are a few of these and one of them had me stumped for some time as I could’nt remember where it went.

Now you might be thinking, some of those bits look a little old. Well, they are, the kit as it happens does not have all the bits in, so ended up using some of the old bits as well as new!

Also, one of the videos I watched on rebuilding a Zenith 361V carb, suggested that the main needle valve replacement had a nylon tip, where the original was all brass. That was indeed the case, so as in the video, I chose to use the all brass version, as it didn’t look worn at all.

All jets back in, start to assemble the case, but before we get to that, I had one little problem. I managed to loose 2 pieces (circled in the images below).

Ok, so onto assembly, pretty simple, so nothing much to say or show about that.

The next part then was to put all the the levers on, which had me turning it upside down, back to front to try and figure out how they all fit. One thing I did do was to get my Zinc plating kit out again, and this time used both Silver and Gold/Yellow passivates, with mixed success, but certianly better than putting back on crusty / rusty parts. Simple lesson if Zinc plating, Clean, Clean and Clean again, without which you wont get good results.

These three images, 1st one, before, 2nd and 3rd images are after. While not perfect, I think they look the part.

All that remains with this is to put it onto the engine. Now, that leads me to another topic, that I’ll touch on here.

I had a weekend a couple of weeks ago, where it seemed everyhting I touched turned to SH.T. Very briefly, I put new studs into the head, to hold on the manifolds. Stupidly, I tried to put them in the wrong way round, should have been short threaded end into the head, so ended up buggering those up. Replaced them with Bolts, all good, they tightened up nicely, so went on to Tighten the 4 nuts holding the inlet manifold onto the Exhaust manifold. The reason for talking about this here, is because the carb sits on top of the Inlet manifold.

Anyway, only needed 17ft lb torque, 1 OK, 2, OK, 3 OK, 4, Humm, doesnt seem to be tightening. SNAP, the f’ing stud snapped.

So, after all that, kindoff back on track now, (certainly in terms of my thinking) with a revised plan, so will crack on with finishing off the engine in the chassis on the next dry weekend. Until then….