Last weekend, my wife and I parked Big Blue on the car show field of the local antique festival and swap meet, and wandered around looking for things we don’t need. I came home with two Carters with Buick starter switches on them, largely because I’m a carburetor junkie, and partially because I’m always looking for spare carburetors for cars I own. I paid twenty bucks a piece, and I won’t be able to use either, as it turns out. But one of them was so intriguing that I had very little choice but to buy it.
The dirtier of the two appears to be from the larger Buick 320, which means that its 1 3/16″ venturis are not optimal for my 263, which would have come with a 1 1/16″ venturi carburetor, such as the one shown above. This carburetor was a “school” carburetor, as explained by the seller and later verified online by a guy who owns a place in Missouri called “The Carburetor Shop.” Basically, auto shops around the country would use these carburetors to teach kids about how carburetors work.
They drilled these holes in just about every part of the carburetor so kids wouldn’t steal them for future use or resale; therefore, adults have NEVER trusted kids: nothing new on that front. Unfortunately, these school carbs are generally useless other than for parts, as this hole in the throttle body is inline with the passenger throttle plate, making a tight seal almost impossible, even if a repair weren’t inherently unsafe, as explained to me by Jon from The Carburetor Shop.
It’s not, however, a total loss, as the float, starter switch, choke cover, metering rods, jets, and throttle and choke shafts are good, not that I’ll ever really try to sell them. I learned something new at the swap meet last weekend, however, and an education is always priceless, even if that education requires a drilled carburetor.
Let’s see – holes drilled to keep it at school and out of private hands. And yet, here you are with one. Hmmmmm. Swap meet you say? 🙂
I had never heard of this practice either. But then I never took auto shop in my high school. I am not sure why, as I think about it.
Ha, that’s neat. Two truths for me here:
I am going to be on the lookout for a spare carb and distributor for my VW now that it’s on the road. Can’t have too many spares.
In high school one of my friends traded the 2 barrel carb off his 71 Impala to his high school shop teacher for a new looking Rochester Quadrajet. Although it didn’t have holes drilled everywhere it had been taken apart and put back together by so many ham fisted shop students that it could not be made to run right. 🙂
A friend bought an early 70’s Chevy 350 from the local school board. This engine was brand new and donated by GM for the auto shop class to disassemble and rebuld repeatedly. Eventually it as sold as surplus just because old carbie pushrod V8’s lost relevance as the years passed.
Foolishly and against advice he installed the engine without looking inside. My friend thoufht that it was rebuilt, so, how bad could it be?
He put it in his truck. It ran, but blew the oil filter off. The oil pressure relief valve was rusted shut. Out the engine came, and a new oil pump went in.
He then drove it 800 miles, then the engine started knocking. Out it came again. Turns out all the crank and rod bolts were original. About 500 retorques over the years had stretched the bolts and ruined their yeild strength. The crank and caps were now scored. He removed the engine and threw it away. What a wastel, to lose a cool NOS motor for want of some basic prep.
These older, basic carburetors are fantastic. I have an Austin A40 one that is in tough shape unlikely to be returned to functional form again but neat to look at.
I don’t have any specific reason to doubt the story, but it somehow doesn’t ring true. I used to work in a vo-tech school with both auto and electronics sections, and neither side had a problem with theft. If a kid made a habit of stealing stuff, other kids would rat on him.
Seems more likely that the holes were educational. Trace airflow through the parts. Hook up a blower to the choke end and feel the air coming out the various holes as you open and close the choke, throttle, and idle jets.
This rings true to me as well, I attended vo-tech schools for 4 years and this never really happened, as it was very obvious if something went missing. My first thought seeing those holes before reading the explanation was to understand what’s going on inside.
They say everyone has a twin somewhere out there. You’ve just demonstrated that in my case, that’s true.
As for something right up your alley, Daniel:
I recently picked up a brand new Holley 1945 (it does NOT look like a remanufactured one) in the Holley box, circa 1987, that I’m going to try on the Dart. It’s apparently for a ’75-’79 slant six, and it’s so clean that I’m going to try just cleaning it up with carb cleaner and popping it on. If not, I have an extra carb kit lying around, but it’ll be nice not messing with a wobbly throttle shaft. The Dart’s at the storage garage right now, but I’ll go get it within a few weeks.
A few weeks ago, I counted over 20 carbs just lying around in my garage, some for cars I don’t even own. What’s that they say about your stuff owning you?
On NOS carbs like that, I don’t even bother taking them apart. I carefully push the inlet needle away from its seat with an unbent paper clip (they stick over the years), shoot a bit of B12 Chemtool (best carb spray on the market) in through the inlet and through the internal bowl vent, drop it on, and fire it up.
The college I attended early 80’s had a 71 Challenger as one of the cars donated for students to work on. It was a 383 2bbl and someone had stolen the trunk lid. There were numerous engines to disassemble (including a Jaguar 6) and lots of carbs–I recall having to do a report on a quadrajet feedback carb and it was still shrink wraped in the box when it was handed to me.
Our highschool metal work shop had a small hill of VW engines and flathead Mercury engines laying around the VW motors were sawn up and melted down to teach sand casting the V8 stuff just lay there and some got spirited away to rebuild a Mercury motor in a boarding school pupils hotrod, A coupe on Mercury chassis chopped and chanelled, they were ex fire pump engines I found out later from when the boarding hostel had been a military hospital, but that A hotrod went ok with its pirated parts.
I grew up and went to school in Dearborn Michigan, the town that Henry built. FOMOCO made sure that our vocational shops always had the best. I believe Fordson HS was his favorite; Henry turned the first shovel of dirt when it was built in 1929.
This included a couple of sedans to work on, a complete selection of the latest FORD power plants, lots of diagnostic machines and parts galore. Metal lathes, grinders, bench supplies…. My- oh- my, we were spoiled rotten.
Every once and a while engineers would drop by to look at our work and lead classes on the newer 1960s tech, they also kept an eye on those students whom the teacher designated as exceptional students. Many HS grads found themselves with good paying jobs at FORD.
Never, ever did a kid endanger the generous pipeline by pilfering anything out of the shop. It was sudden and disastrous for them if they did, both by the school and by their peers. And never did we ‘drill out’ or desecrate a part for schooling.
Back in the early ’80s, our high school ( Tigard High) got a truckload of Holley/Weber 5210’s donated by Chrysler, for “educational” purposes. They were supposedly defective or warranty returns (they were used on the 2.2L). My teacher let me pick one, I swapped it onto the 8-RC engine in my Toyota Corona Mark II, and after some minor jetting changes, never looked back. Great carb it was.
This is my conversation over at the Buick Club website for those of you who question the assertion about the drilled holes.
http://forums.aaca.org/topic/282918-straight-8-carter-with-holes/
As far as drilling the holes to learn about the systems, the holes are really not located anyplace advantageous for that. The hole in the back of the carb gives you a nice view of the float bowl, but not of any float operation, and certainly not anything about airflow through the venturis or anything. There’s also a hole by the choke thermostatic cover that wouldn’t be there for any possible reason that I can think of.
Considering what Jon from the Carb Shop said, I wonder if this was something that Carter corporation did, which would be another reason why some of you never saw anything similar in your various vocational schools.
Now that would make more sense – I can see Carter doing it to prevent resale of the otherwise-new carbs.
My old HS auto shop had 4 new donated 327 Chevy’s on engine stands for rebuilding and test purposes. One of the tests would be for the teacher to pull the distributor and wires out of the cap, turn the engine over with the starter and then have the student put it back together and get it running. The fire extinguisher was close by, and lots of backfiring and flames shooting out of the carb and exhaust was the result. There also was an old flathead V8 Ford outside, but it was never worked on. The shop was well equipped, with cylinder boring machine and valve grinder, among many other tools.
About the only theft prevention I remember was the tools on the school tool rack all had the schools name etched in them. I accidently left a 17 MM wrench in the engine compartment of my ’65 VW Bus after an engine rebuild, and found it about a year after I graduated. I still have and use it after all these years, I always smile a little bit when I see my old schools name engraved on it, 42 years later.
I once asked my teacher if I could trade one of the bench 327’s for the old smokey 283 in my ’65 Chevy C10, but the teacher said he didn’t want to risk losing his job if we got found out. Probably would have had the same problems as OntarioMike’s friend had.
I rebuilt a Quadrajet carb in the shop that I got from a junkyard along with manifold and replaced the 2 barrel carb and manifold on my C10’s 283 with it. The carb worked fine and had a nice sound, along with a little more power, and a lot more gas consumption but whenever I opened up the secondaries the tired old engine would blow tons of blue smoke with the new carb set up.
Makes me wish my school had an auto shop class, but alas, we did not. By the time I was in high school (1994-98) very few of the individual schools had them, if any; instead, such “specialty” classes were held at two magnet-style schools that offered most of the vocational classes. And I didn’t feel like having to drive across town in the middle of the school day. In retrospect, maybe I should have…
At my “normal” high school we didn’t even have wood shop classes anymore by my time. The room was still there, and some of the equipment, but it wasn’t used for anything. Only reason I even knew of its existence was due to its being next door to the drafting room, and I suspect the only reason drafting survived was due to CAD.
JB Weld FTW