I get asked often how to tune a carburetor. Carburetors need occasional adjustment since they are manually tuned. Unlike Fuel injection on modern cars which is controlled by the onboard computer, carburetors depend on you to keep them in tune.
You should tune your carburetor in the summer, the winter, if you are driving in an altitude that has significantly changed, if you have modified the engine or added any parts that affect intake, exhaust, or timing. You should also adjust your carburetor if you change the timing on the distributor.
There are typically three types of carburetors:
single barrel or monojet – When looking down on it from the top, this carburetor has only one ‘barrel’ and will have only one butterfly valve.
two barrel – This carburetor will have two barrels when looking down from the top. You will also see two butterfly valves, one in each barrel.
four barrel or quadrajet – A quadrajet is a type of four barrel, but does operate differently from a standard four barrel. Looking down from the top of either of these, you will see four barrels and four butterfly valves, one in each barrel.
Tuning any of these types of carburetors is pretty much the same. Near the base of the carburetor you will see one or two screws. One barrels have only one screw at the base. All other carburetors will have two screws. These screws are your mixture screws. They control how much fuel is let into the carburetor and mixed with air. If you have too much or to little fuel coming from your carburetor your engine will not run at it’s best. You will lose horse power, and have poor gas mileage. It’s important you tune your carburetor for optimum performance.
Here are the steps to tuning your carburetor:
Start your engine and let it warm up
Make sure your choke is open. If you have an electric choke it should be open at this point. If you have a manual choke, should check that it is open.
While the engine is running, start turning one of the screws at the base of the carburetor in the direction that causes your engine RPM to increase. Keep turning the screw as the RPM increases. At some point the RPM will peak, and start going back down. Once this happens, turn the screw back the opposite direction so that the RPM is back at it’s peak.
If you have two screws at your base (two barrels, four barrels, and quadrajets), you now adjust the second screw at the base of the carburetor. Do the exact same thing you did with the first screw. Once the RPM has peaked with the second screw stop turning it.
Now it’s time to adjust your engine RPM. Chances are at this point your engine RPM may be too high at idle. There will be another screw, near where your throttle linkage connects to the carburetor. Turn this screw to bring the RPMS up or down to an idle that you are happy with. Generally I keep my idle RPM around 700 RPMS, and this would probably be alright for the motor you are working on too.
NOTE: If you have multiple carburetors, adjust the mixture screws for each carburetor as stated above. The only difference is that when adjusting the idle RPM, the linkage that connects all the carburetors together will have a way to adjust RPM so that it keeps all the carburetors in sync.
That’s it! Your carburetor is now tuned! Go for a test drive and make sure it feels good. You should notice your throttle will be more responsive, and generally runs better. If not, you may have other problems such as a timing issue, or possibly problems with your carburetor which would require a repair.
Just thought I’d share these photos of me and my 1998 Dodge Viper at the weekly Kingstowne car meet. Thanks to my buddy and professional photographer RA Villanueva for taking the photos!
A few months ago I bought an Asus Eee PC 1005PE (it’s actually the 1005PEB Best Buy version, but basically the same thing). It had been working fine for months until today when I decided to open up the memory and replace the 1GB with a new 2GB module. After doing so the netbook would turn on, but the it would never boot the bios, and the screen stayed blank and black.
I researched all over the internet trying to find a solution, but nothing seemed to be working. A lot of sites say to hit the ‘reset’ button on the older models, however near as I can tell there is no reset button on the 1005PE models, and there is no mention of it in the manual.
So after an hour of searching and trying things that did not work, I went back to to the basics and low and behold I was able to get it to boot up again! Here is what I did:
Power off the laptop, unplug it from the power adapter and remove the battery.
Remove the cover where the memory is located, and remove the memory module.
Now firmly place the memory back in it’s slot. It’s important to note that these Netbooks seem to be very finicky about the seating of the memory and I had to do this several time before getting it ‘right’ and the Netbook would turn on. Do not put the cover back on the memory slot just yet, because you may be repeating these steps several times before getting it to work, and replacing the cover is annoying.
Hold the power button down for 30 seconds. Remember, the batter and power adapter should still be removed.
Now plug in the power adapter, and hit the power button once to turn on the Netbook.
At this point, if it worked, your Netbook has been fixed. Turn it back off, replace the batter, and the cover to the memory slot. IF IT DID NOT WORK, start over with step 3. As I said before, the Netbook is real sensitive and finicky with how the memory is seated, and it may take several attempts to get it right.
If after trying these steps several time, you still can’t get it to work, try the above steps again but using the original memory from your Netbook. It could be possible that the new memory is bad or not compatible with your Netbook. If you still can’t get your Netbook to turn on with the old memory then unfortunately you may need to get it serviced.
I’ve been asked a lot, and wonder myself, if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has his own Facebook profile. I’m not talking about a fan page, which he does have, but a personal Facebook account like we all do. As it turns out the answer is yes! Although for obvious reasons most of his profile is private, and you can’t add him as a friend.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything of any great significant cultural value. After coming across this Tom Green clip, I thought it was time I changed that.
Anyone ever notice how a baby crib really looks like a poorly constructed cage? It would seem safer and more cost effective to just buy a cage, throw in a mattress and blanket, and lock it at night so you can sleep peacefully knowing your child can’t escape.
Now that I think about it, calling it a cage sounds horrible. It should be marketed as a ‘Reinforced Crib’. What parent wouldn’t sleep better at night knowing their child is protected in a ‘Reinforced Crib’?
I picked up the keyboard dock for the iPad, and downloaded the iPad WordPress app so I can update my many websites running WordPress. So far I’m impressed, it seems to be working really well. The only thing I’m going to have to get use to is not having a mouse, and instead touching the screen to move around. Having a keyboard is way more useful and efficient than trying to type up long blog posting using the iPad screen keyboard. If you have an iPad, I highly recommend the keyboard dock.
