[Mgs] Carb cleaning

Sat Apr 25 18:25:47 MDT 2020

Rick,   Yes, I wondered what he referred to when he said Clean, thought it might be the outward looks possibly not inside and operational. Good comments below.

paul

On Apr 25, 2020, at 8:53 AM, Richard Lindsay via Mgs <mgs at autox.team.net<mailto:mgs at autox.team.net>> wrote:

Paul had some good suggestions and I agree. But Tom, I find myself pondering over your word 'clean'. Do you mean 'shine them up' or 'remove deposits from inside'?  Carb cleaner is good for both jobs and let me add a word or two if cleaning inside is the quest.

I just cleaned the SUs on my TD and doing so made a world of difference. But first of all, someone here said, "Most carburetor problems are electrical." That's a funny turn of phrase but it's true. I tuned and tuned my TD's SUs before putting the timing light on the TD and discovered that the timing was jumping around. New springs in the distributor's mechanical advance calmed the jitter making carburetor tuning a one time affair. But back to cleaning.

I marked the covers for rotation position, removed the damper pistons, and removed the covers, setting them aside carefully, labeled 'F' and 'R'. I then lifted out the air pistons complete with needles, dumped out the oil, and set them aside with their covers.

Using fresh, clean, pipe cleaners wetted with carb cleaner, I carefully ran the pipe cleaners up and down the jets, switching to a new pipe cleaner as the previous one became discolored. I then wiped the chokes clean with a shop rag and carb cleaner. That finished the carb bodies.

I next cleaned the air pistons and needles with carb cleaner and shop rags paying particular care to protect the needles. I also sprayed carb cleaner into the damper bore, washing out any old oil. The insides of the covers were wiped clean and the piston bores were flushed clean.

I live in a very humid climate where rust flashes quickly. I don't know whether the air pistons and bores are stainless but I took no chances. I applied 3-in-1 oil to the air pistons and inserted them into the bores in the covers, coating all with light oil.

Back at the car I verified that the heights of the jets and were the same then switched on the fuel pump. Petrol came to the top of one jet but not to the other. I adjusted the float bowl valve until both levels were the same.

Back in went the air pistons, the covers on and the screws tightened gradually checking for proper piston drop as they were snugged down. BTW, I use lockwashers on the carb bowl screws so they don't work loose but more importantly, so they don't need to be over-tightened.

The rest is tuning. Airflow was balanced and the mixture was reset.

The part I left out was cleaning the needles but that's quite controversial so let's leave it at, "I cleaned the needles."

And of course, this is just my story, not an authoritative treatise on SU maintenance. Maybe it helps someone.

Rick

On Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 5:54 AM Thomas Gunderson via Mgs <mgs at autox.team.net<mailto:mgs at autox.team.net>> wrote:
What is a good way to clean SU carbs without removing them?

Tom Gunderson
1957 MGA 1500 rst

Sent from my iPhone X

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Paul Osborne
Department of Electrical and Computer Eng
University of Rochester
201 Hopeman Building RC
Rochester NY 14627
   585-275-5226

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