A bit of a long story, lots of fail, not much about carbs until later, but here it is. Last summer, when there was the “heat dome” over western Canada my wife and I took my Wildcat 300 miles out to my dad’s farm to show him the running car before I moved East. I just got it back on the road after many years slowly restoring it to drivable status and he was the original owner. During the drive there it drove fine, while visiting and cruising around, it started to act up like a high rpm misfire, checked the plugs with my uncle later, it looked fine so I gapped them a bit tighter hoping it would cure it for the drive home, thinking it’s just the heat weakening the coil. On the way home the outside temp got to 42c (106f?), we stopped at the first town for lunch and to cool off (no A/C). As soon as we set off again the transmission lost 3rd gear, slipped like crazy unless near coasting, also slipped slightly in reverse. I checked the fluid, it smelled fairly burnt, but not too bad, so I took it to a quick lube place to have the fluid changed and maybe it would hold until I got home. Cheaper than a tow truck and worth a shot. Leaving, it ran OK for a couple miles out of town, then started slipping again. It held solid in 2nd gear, so I decided if the transmission needs to be rebuilt anyways I’ll just drive it home. I held it in 2nd, kept the rpm around 3000rpm and cruised along at 45-50mph, after an hour of this, the misfire came back. Now it would hold 3000rpm if the engine vacuum was over 14”hg, any less and it would sputter and buck, small hills became a challenge, good thing we were in the prairies. Many hours later with multiple rest stops and wicked sunburns, we made it home. A coworker offered to rebuild the transmission (for a fee, but discounted, of course) as he had a lift and the time, and the movers were coming in a few weeks and the Wildcat also needed to be drivable to get on the car hauler for the move to Ontario. As suspected, the direct clutch pack was toast only one friction disk had any material left, everything else looked ok so a rebuild with fresh clutches, steels, seals and cooler went in with a new torque convertor with a slightly higher stall (another former coworker worked at a driveline shop and built them all the time, so I got it for the same price as a stock replacement). The misfire was still there, I swapped a spare coil and wires that I was going to switch over anyways to no effect, looked to be more fuel related, but I ran out of time to diagnose it or throw any more parts at it until I got settled. The move turned into a fiasco, house bidding outpaced our ability to buy unless we could drop $100k over asking price with no conditions, we ended up shuffling between AirB&Bs until we ended up in a rental house days before the snow fell. By that time all I could do was put a cover over the car and wait till spring to figure out the issues. A couple weeks ago I pulled the car out of hibernation, found a few other issues, rear brake shoes were cracked, etc so I ordered some parts and got to work. I replaced any of the original rubber fuel lines that were left and the fuel pump as it was 50 years old and suspect. Took it out and still died around 3000rpm. Feeling frustrated, I pulled the carb that I rebuilt (in between Cliffs recipe 1&2 due to engine specs) a few years ago and noticed that the primary wells were leaking. Strange, since I pressure tested it then and it had no issues after the rebuild, pulled hard and very smooth transition to the secondaries, but the extreme heat that day must’ve cracked the seal on the plugs. I had purchased an old 6213 800 Holley spreadbore from Facebook marketplace a few years ago and gave it quick rebuild to experiment on once I got it ready to take to track to compare with the QJet. But now it was time to put it on and give it a shot. A couple of hours later, the new carb was bolted on, a few idle adjustments and it was ready for a test drive. I only wanted to use this carb for the track, the choke was removed and a double pumper with straight leg boosters isn’t ideal for a 4400lb car according to any carb buying guide. After taking it for a drive its road manners are great, decent cruise, snappy throttle response and roasts tires off the stop lights, pulling hard to 5000rpm. I’ll give this a long term test and spend some time tuning it with a wideband O2 sensor in the future to see how good I can get from a double pumper in a large car. It still has all the factory jet and accelerator pump settings so I’m sure there’s room for improvement. Anyways, there’s my long post about the last year of classic car issues. Was feeling pretty down about the car until I found the cause for the fuel delivery problem, should be good for summer cruising now, if I can afford the gas…
Yep..holleys are a quick cure for dead q jets.I slap em on just about all my summer cruisers...be it a buick mopar or pontiac .There easy to tune and parts all over not to many guys get the q jet right.
Glad you to hear things are getting sorted out! My original QJet was giving me fits during a deployment and move and we ended up putting a Summit Carb on and she ran like a dream. The Qjet kept leaning out on acceleration causing a heating issue. Adjustments got us nowhere. I still have the QJet carb in a box; to be rebuilt one day and put back on (as a father-in-law/son-in-law project one day). -MIG
I moved to Ottawa, actually. Here’s a shot of the car from last summer, haven’t had time to detail it yet.
I thought I had it all under control for tuning it, as I had an old out of production Edelbrock tuning kit. I spent a lot of time getting the jetting and rods set, it ran great for about a year everywhere except just at tip in from idle, I was just about to creep up on adding some more idle air bypass to get it dialed in. The Holly, by contrast, didn’t care, snappy right from base settings. I gave the throttle speed screw about 1/8 of a turn and the idle screws even less and it was running fine. I think I’ll lose some fuel economy, but with the spreadbore set up, I can dial that in easily once I get some data.
