66 Bonneville Carb

[GrandpaDave]

Hi again Larry - Hope you can help with this one. I had the carb rebuilt 3 years ago and the car has been running great until I took it out of storage this past April (unheated storage). It started stalling a lot and would not start unless I jammed the butterfly closed, then it would start right away but would run a bit rough. There was still 1/2 tank of gas from last fall so I filled it up with premium, then it would not run at all without the butterfly jammed closed. I bought a paper cartridge filter but when I went to install it, there was no filter in the chamber (hard to believe after having it rebuilt). I did find a mucousy blob in the chamber so I cleaned it, installed the filter and it did not make one bit of difference. I traced back the fuel line towards the fuel pump and found an in-line filter so I bypassed it and the car ran fine. Yesterday, I filled it again with premium and added a lead additive to the gas tank. Now I have the exact same problem again, it will not run without the butterfly totally closed. One of my friends said maybe there is crud in the gas tank from the past 46 years and maybe it has gotten into the carb jets. Can anything like that get past the fuel filter? I'm not sure if I should replace the tank or the carb, or both, it is driving me nuts. Any suggestions?

[GrandpaDave]

Hi again guys - I have the carb in being rebuilt now. I do have a question - when I took it off, I noticed that the rear bolt on the passenger side has a steel vacuum coming up through the middle of the stud, it has a short piece of vacuum hose attached with a small screw plugging it. Is this supposed to be going anywhere?

[Larry]

Check in our "On-Line Reference Library" (under the "Members" tab). We have the full 1966 Service Manual posted. The carb/fuel section should have diagrams outlining vacuum hose routing.

Some of the sections are large so may open slowly depending on your band width.