JB

Just bought a beautiful correct 7029215 Qjet with the right dates for my '69 L-36. Kind of expensive, but I really wanted it, and it's about the cleanest unrestored 33 year old carb I've ever seen. It's supposedly never been mounted on a car--it was a Rochester "Master" carb used for wet-testing by Rochester engineering, and still has the tag attached to it from 1968 with the tester's notes and settings on it.

Anyway, I popped off the airhorn & found some damage. It looks like someone dropped the carb while the airhorn was off and the top of one of the venturis is chipped and mangled some (it looks like it might if you dragged a coarse file across it a few times). I don't know if it's enough to affect the performance of the carb or not.

Should I try to get my money back on this one? Is it repairable? Does it need to be repaired? Am I right to be as disappointed in this carb as I am (I looked for a long time before I found this one, and it really looks sweet other than the damaged venturi).

JB


[Modified by JB, 9:42 PM 9/13/2003]

AlwaysWave

If you bought it with the understanding that it was ready to run, I'd demand some money back for the repair cost and time. Or hand it back for a full refund.

cardo0

That’s really a decision only for you. I’m can see a numbers correct carb is very important to you JB otherwise any good carb would do. Now I’ve meet people that claim they can repair old carbs by using sacrificial carb pieces just for the metal. Hemmings Motor News would be a good place to look for carb resto help.
But I can think of more replacement parts to spend money on rather than expensive carburetors. :nonod:

Larry B.

I think I saw that carb on E bay at one time. It did look nice. If the damage is to the little "booster" venturi's., I believe they are removable They may be interchangable with other carbs of the same era. I have seen some pretty beat up venturi's in rebuilt units over the years. I have often wondered if it affected the performance in some way. It's kinda hard to compare without special equippment. Since the venturi princple is what makes carbs work in the first place, I would think they would need to be as perfect as possible. I have a few parts cabs.. I'll look close and see if I have a good set of boosters.

lars

The booster are not replaceable in a Q-Jet.
Some nicks and damage to the top of the boosters is not uncommon. You can simply take a Swiss file and some emory cloth, remove the displaced metal, blend the inlet radius back in, and smooth it out with the emory - there will be no degradation in performance. If you'd like, you can send me the float bowl and I can do it for you and touch-up the iridite finish in that area to make it unoticable. No big deal.

JB

Lars, Larry--thanks for the offers. Lars, I've IM'd you about it.

Cardo--yeah, I kind of get obsessive about things like that. When Lars tuned my car and showed me what a rotten POS frankencarb I had, I intended to just replace it with a suitable replacement (I even bought a 7029201 carb that was originally on a '69 BB Chevelle or El Camino). But then I got the bug. The truth is, I got a deal on the carb, I think, though it was more than I intended to spend--I had gotten quotes from restoration places as high as $1100 for a restored 7029215 carb, and I got this one for considerably less than half that.

JB