Carter AFB Carb Experts?

You may need to hit the gym if you don’t think you can bend that bracket by hand. That’s a typical way to adjust float height (at least on a holley). What’s the concern with the size?

I wish that was the only concern, but bending it simply wont work. The attachment point of the arm to the float is different and it will effect the contact angle of the needle.

This may help to show the problem.

New Float


Old Float


There is well over 1/10" difference in the anchor point of the float arm. I think simply bending the are wont change the way the needle contacts the float. Not to mention the difference in the shape of the new floats is much broader on the bottom side.

My experience with the holly floats is that the difference of a few degrees makes a huge difference in weather the needle seats properly or not.

Well Chris, if it was me I'd bend a z into the arm, or solder a washer to get the offset you need.

Study how the old float sits on the closed needle & try to match that.

What do you have to lose but some time?

Far from an expert, but I can tell you that your original floats are for a Carter AFB carburetor and the ones you bought are probably for a Carter AVS carburetor.

They were sized/shaped a little differently and the pivot point was different too. Sounds just like your problem.

You could do some bending and whatever else or you could order the right floats and be all set.

YES!!!!!

Keno to the rescue! Bada$$!

Thanks Ken!

I don't understand the dislike for them among CCF.

I don't think so Pete,it isn't just boats. Back in the stone age of the early 70 everyone was pulling their carbs off and putting Holley's on. They even came standard on AAR Cudas and other muscle cars of the day. Carters just were not considered hi performance.

TRBenj wrote: They certainly do look cool on the classics that came with them originally... and they seem to work just fine. I don’t understand them like I do Holley’s but my perception matches Gary’s description- they’re not as well suited to a high performance application.

I never considered the basic 318 that's in many of our classic CC's to be a high performance engine.

Box up the carb and send it to the following:
Carolina Carburetor Specialist
1020 Princess St.
Wilmington, NC 28401
910-762-4695
Ask for Butch
It will be plug N play and he remanufactures it and he does a bench flow test to dial it in. it simulates an engine so it is all ready to go when he is done. Not cheap, but done correctly and one less thing to worry about.
Butch is the man.

JMO,

Donald

chau8238 wrote: I will admit edelbrocks aren't suited for performance, but our boats aren't performance boats either. They aren't running 5,000 or more RPM's and idling at 1200.

Better speak for yourself!

Shame on those who say to replace with a holley or “send it out”. The AFB is well suited to the ‘72 340 that it will be sitting on, and carb rebuilds aren’t rocket science. Keep after it, Chris.

Have not touched my Weber / AFB since the day I installed and tuned it. Not one fuel leak, no blown power valves, no starting issues. Nada, it just runs perfectly every time. It seems to make decent power as well., A couple people here have run my boat.
Think its well over 4 years now.
Just saying.

I cant remember ever getting that kind of reliability from any other carburetor.

Bruce, generally a Carter was tuned exactly to the engine it was meant to be on.

Edelebrocks are just set up to generally fit an engine of said displacement. Which is why the correct Carters are usually great and Edelbrocks are so so.

They are much harder to tune than a Holley. There is more info on how to properly set up a Holley for our applications and Holleys are more forgiving in the tuning department.

The Carter has to have the secondary air door weight tuned based on the engine it is installed in which requires grinding the weights. They also have springs that operate on engine vacuum that control the stepped rods into the primary circuit jets. Those can be tuned with a springs and also with rods that have a multitude of step options/diameters. Then you have the jet's themselves. There is also a 3 hole adjustment on the accelerator pump plunger.

If all of those things aren't working in perfect harmony on a Carter you'll get something that isn't seamless. As long as the engine is close to as designed spec the Carter should bolt on and work just fine. Start tuning them and things get complicated.

Eh, I have a general dislike for Edelbrock because of the reasons above.
Carters can be good but Holley's are the choice for a performance build that changes things like camshaft and jetting etc.

Close to stock engine with a Carter just rebuild it with the proper parts it came with and you are good to go.

The PO of Dave's 440 Arabian installed a fresh Eddy when the Carter wouldn't work. Edelbrock sucked. I opened the Carter and found that poor quality needle and seats had been used that wouldn't seal properly. I checked the float levels/cleaned it all and installed the fresh needle and seats and it ran like a top.

I think it turned around 4900 rpms and ran 52 ish on my GPS. Might go faster with more prop. I forget where I set total timing but he nabbed up 2 sets of NOS correct point's for the thing. It had some wonky ass point installed that I had to bend to make the dwell correct.

rosconole wrote: Don't waste your time and money messing with a carter, their fuel pumps are junk too, not just the carbs.

Wow, I guess I had better start to worry about that "junk" Carter fuel pump that's on my 312. It's 54 years old and never been touched so it may go at any second.