[updated:LAST EDITED ON 04-Oct-02 AT 04:17 PM (EST)]Five years after someone said "your carb is on it's last legs", I think it finally is. I worked around the sticking choke problems with a few adjustments. Cured rich conditions with a simple twist of the mixture screw every now and then ... but this one I can't beat. If it sits for more than 7 to 7.5 hours, it will not start. Well, not without a good deal of cranking. Like 5 to 10 and now recently 20 minutes. It's like it dumps a gallon of fuel into the engine at the first crank after sitting because it instantly floods out. Then it goes through a series of ALMOST starts after a couple of minutes. Then when I'm about ready to drop matches in the gas tank it starts.

Here's my untrained professional back yard opinion. There's a pinhole in the float inside the carb. When it sits too long (over 7 hours) it fills with fuel and sinks, causing it to flood when I try to start the engine again. After it's started that first time in the morning it's fine. Four or five hours between going to work and lunch, running around downtown, no problems. She cranks right over and fires almost instantly. It's ONLY after it sits for more than 7 hours or so.

Anyone think I could be right? I'll just be really happy to have a new carb on it for winter. I don't think a battery would take the kind of cranking at -40!!
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Chris Pollard
Dryden, ON
Don't mind me, I'm crazy.
84 F150 giving credit to the old saying Fixed Or Repaired Daily. But it won't be long until the whole bloody thing has been rebuilt with new parts! (Just in time for the first repairs to fail. )

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-Oct-02 AT 07:38 PM (EST)] Are you smelling/seeing fuel when it floods? Reason I ask is it sounds like a fuel pump problem to me. As if it reverse drains while sitting and then has problems getting enough fuel to get started and up to enough rpm that it can pump a decent amount of fuel. If the check valve/anti-drain back valve in the pump was shot, it could act like that.

Next time it acts like it's flooded, pull the air cleaner and look down the throttle bore while pumping the throttle. If you don't see a little fuel squirting out, try priming it with a shot of gas or a little carb cleaner.

The other thing you could do to check it is install a clear inline fuel filter. If it looks like it's pumping foam while idling your fuel pump is on it's last leg.

Just an idea, hope it helps.

P.S. IF you had a float pin hole it would flood all the time. So badly it probably wouldn't even run.

 

if the float had a hole in it, the float will be always suck at the bottom. it sounds like either a fuel pump like previosly posted or maybe you need to think aobout rebuilding the carb.

 

The fuel pump is only a few months old. I put the new carb on and she runs like a top again. Whatever the problem with that carb was, it's out of my hands now.

New carb ... $145. Installation ... half an hour in the driveway. Knowing the truck will start in the morning ... priceless.

Chris Pollard
Dryden, ON
Don't mind me, I'm crazy.

 

I had a car like this a long time ago. It turned out to be the needle seats on the carb (the thing the float operates whent it goes up and down). They are synthetic and when they get old and worn, they stick closed after they sit together for a long time.