I’m working on an off topic project that is having some carb issues (supposedly rebuilt) and wondering if it could be old gas. The P.O. said it was added over a year ago, and I’m not sure how long gas lasts these days. If the consensus is that it’s bad, I will drain it and refill it…
A year? That is not a big deal. hat said if he put a gallon in and let the car set outdoors, condensation could have diluted the mix a bit. Even the ethanol **** should set a year in the tank. In the carb, that is another story.
Kinda what I thought. But I’ve gotta take the word of the guy I bought it from that that’s when he put it in. Nothing on the car looks like it’s been done recently…
Bad gas smells funky and looks like turpentine. If it only has a few gallons, drain it and blow out the lines. Use it for starting a bon fire or killing weeds. Put a new filter on it, replace the rubber bits of the line, if it's a carb, kit it.
The fuel will last a year or so in ideal conditions, but you get phase separation between the ethanol and gasoline in ethanol-blended fuels, and that can happen over just a few weeks of sitting if condensation is present, like in a carb bowl or fuel tank that sits for extended time. The ethanol bonds with the water and literally separates from the gasoline. That's more a problem for engine internals than carb internals, but....... The ethanol blends can also play hell on the plastic and rubber components of older carbs not designed to be compatible with ethanol blends. Plastic and rubber will dry out, shrink, and crack with enough exposure to ethanol.
How clean the gas was when it was put into the car could play a roll in its current condition too. Some gas stations have really dirty tanks with lots of junk in the bottom of them. If the guy bought the gas while the stations tanks were being filled, that junk could have been pumped into the car's tank. That junk can clog the fuel p***ages through the carb. How much fuel is currently in the tank? It may be worth while to drain it, clean things up, and add fresh gas. The PO said he added gas a year ago, but how much new gas did he add and how old was the gas he added the year old stuff to? If the current gas is mostly a year old, and there is less then 1/2 a tank, you may get by with filling the tank a couple times in a row and it may be OK. you should see an improvement after a couple tanks of fresh gas. Personally, I would pull the top off the carb and have a look inside of it. If it looks like there is a white powder in the bottom of the float bowls, I would rebuild the carb again (be sure to blow out all the fuel p***ages in the carb), replace the fuel filter(s) and all the rubber hoses in the fuel lines, then put in all fresh new gas.
That’s probably what I’m going to do. Put the car up on jack stands this afternoon, and am going to bleed the brakes tomorrow…
I’ve had ethanol-free gas go ‘off’ in a year. I’d rig a temporary fuel supply and see how it runs. Of course, that won’t do anything about any **** already in the carb.
A "coupla" years...NO PROBLEM ! I sold a Suburban that had been sitting a LONG while. I noticed that the guy got all the bad rubber hoses replaced, and it supposedly started fairly easily, with NO...other changes or fixes. I asked, what about the gas ? He said that it had a half a tank of gas in it, so he didn't mess with that. The guy isn't a car guy, just some guy off the street (literally). He wouldn't know bad gas from 115 oct. race gas. It started with very little h***le !!!!!!! Mike
This is the "off-topic" section. What kind of vehicle? You can speak the forbidden words! What are the symptoms?
The vehicle is a ‘72 Fiat “Sport Spider”. This is my first Italian car, my first 2bbl Weber, and not my usual American V8… The symptoms are: I can get it to fire up and idle, but it chokes up when I try and give it some gas. Waiting for it to warm up doesn’t seem to help.
Fill up a clean gl*** jar with the gas you drain. Let it sit. If it separates into two parts, you’ll have the results of ethanol contaminated by water ,fuel. Show us the results.
"chokes up when I try and give it some gas" doesn't sound like bad gas to me. Floats? Accelerator pump? Timing? Fresh fuel wouldn't hurt, but I don't think that's what it is. "Supposedly rebuilt" says a lot. It's not as simple as slapping in some new gaskets. The number of cylinders doesn't matter, and a Weber is still just a carb. Nothing magical or mysterious. I just rebuilt triple SUs and the engine runs great. They're just carbs. Weird carbs, but just carbs. Same with Webers.
I have no issue with cleaning and rebuilding carbs, I regularly did my 4bbls. Seems like a “rebuild” kit is just gaskets these days anyway. They used to include jets, accelerator pumps, check balls etc…
"... 2bbl Weber ...". I recently discovered that my 2bbl Weber had an accelerator pump issue - the squirter was not drilled all the way through. There was no squirt making it into the primary barrel. Caused a lean stumble on acceleration. I used the closest drill bit (Harbor Freight used to sell a drill index with 115 drill bits) and a pin vice to hand drill the rest of the way through. Verify that the accelerator pump is squirting down the primary barrel. Russ EDIT: The squirter is called a pump discharge nozzle in the diagram below
The Jalopy Journal
