411 383 Carter Carbs

[Richard Leslie Phillips]

OK - finally rebuilt the carbs with the right kit and fitted earlier today. However all is not well. The car started up instantly and then died - investigation shows the secondary set of barrels totally full, and I mean FULL, of fuel with the venturis tight shut. How is this happening? I checked the floats, swapped them round in case there was a bias in them - they seem to move freely and needles are OK. Autochoke is clearly operating as car has not had any chance to warm up so how and why is petrol getting in - the level was so high that it was pouring out of the hinges for the flaps. The accelerator pedal was not depressed at all, nor was any priming or pumping done. Where am I going wrong? Have I a linkage the wrong way round? The gaskets all look tight. Fuel flow is normal so not a high pressure thing from the pump. Clearly I have made some kind of mistake in reassembly but cannot think what. HELP! I am going quite mad trying to work it out....

[Richard Leslie Phillips]

Finally established the problem - the floats were full of petrol. Whilst resettting the levels I clearly weakened both joints which resulted in a crack in the seams. So....does anyone have a spare set I could have for an AVS?! It was a rather disasterous weekend - having fixed the leak with epoxy the car made it to the hotel I booked...or 200 yards from it as we ended up coasting to the entrance where the car remained for the rest of the night! Stripped the carb down this morning in the hotel car park to discover the problem was the epxy had not set and was pourous - tried to solder but no luck and had to have her recovered back to Cambridge on the back of a low loader so missed the BOC lunch at Gaydon. Damn it. The joys of old car ownership. Lucky I have an understanding girlfriend! And it was a lovely sunny day....

[GREG]

I have a spare carb you can swap floats from