Attempting the Weber carb install

[brickdog2000]

I am going to be putting in a weber carb in my 88 festiva. I did my reasearch and have been getting excellent advice from drddan. I cant thank him enough. However, I am a poor boy so I will not be making pretty adapter plates like he did. Instead I am making a tower sort of speak to make my intake compatible with the weber carb. I will also be fabricating an air box that has a pipe that goes across the valve cover to hook up to the existing air filter that cam with teh car when I bought it. I will be sure to post pics as progress is made.:p

[DriverOne]

You've got my interest! Any projected HP gains? What do you think it will do to the gas mileage?

[Evil D]

You could make an adapter out of laminated ply wood, like skateboards are made of. They used to (and probably still) make carb spacers out of the same wood, and i don't see why you couldn't make it work as long as you could drill and tap it well enough to mount it. Wood might be easier to work with than aluminum depending on what tools you have.

[zoe60]

Seems like everyone's carbs are wearing out at the same time. I just got a redline kit off ebay for a Suzuki Samarai. I am making the bottom part of the adapter plate out of 3/8" aluminum. I'm gonna try to fool everything so the check engine light doesn't come on. I'd like to use the original cable attacher thing so I can rig up the air conditioner dashpot. Maybe we can compare notes since were doing it at the same time.

[bravekozak]

weld

Find a good aluminum welder + machinist and you won't need to make an adapter plate. Just build up where the mounts are. Then face, drill and tap four holes. Good luck.

[brickdog2000]

This is the begining. As a poor boy I am using what I can get for free.

[brickdog2000]

Progress slowly being made.

[brickdog2000]

This should be the finished product.

The picture beneanth should be my fix for the throttle. I will let you all know if it works out. We just simply cut and trimmed the throotle linkage off of my original carb and drilled a hole so that we could fasten it to the new carb.

[IdealSociety]

you guys just need to stock up on spare parts like me so you always have extra carbs motors, trans ect

then again ive been in the festiva modifying game for a while

with that said im interested in this since ive never actually bothered with carbs (im 24 so im the FI generation of auto enthusiasts) however since i now daily a 68 VW Squareback with dual webers carbs have kinda caught my attention.

What weber are you using? i think if i went carbs i would try to adapt a set of side-drafts like the vw rabbit guys tend to use. an extra intake mani and some home-made flanges could probably squeeze them in there quite nicely and give the stock motor (or any swaps really) a nice throaty sound and a bit of uniqueness!

[brickdog2000]

I'm using a Weber 32/36 dfev. Right now it bolts up, but I am currently working on the throttle issue. I am doing everything at the lowest cost possible (except for the carb). So I have managed to make (with some help) an adapter. I also was able to keep my current air filter housing. All we did is cut it to fit over the carb. This gives me several benefits. I dont need to spend money a new air filter, I dont have to worry about the placement of the hoses that connect to the side of it either. Now if I can only get the throttle figured out.

[zoe60]

I got a DGEV and the throttle linkage off my spare Asian bolted right on. I think it's going to work perfectly. I'll find out this weekend.

[brickdog2000]

zoe60 good luck. I thought mine would work out just fine too, but turns out I need to do more fabricating. I almost lost it today while working on it. Partially cause I was losing patience and wanted it work today. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

[brickdog2000]

I would love to pics, but I would rather wait until she is running right. The good news is she started tonight. The bad is she wont stay running or she will idle really high. On top of that the choke wont close all the way, which is the reason why I bought this carb in the first place. I am thinking about trashing this project, but I think I will sleep on it and calm down. I am just a little frustrated after the two to three days of fabricating, just to have this new carb do the samething as the original one. I guess we will see what happens next.

[brickdog2000]

Well got her to fire up, but she stills needs some fine tuning. I am hoping that in the next couple of days that she will be running smooth. When it is I will post what I did to help others to make this a smooth process as much as possible.

[IdealSociety]

webers are thankfully pretty easy to tune. i had a 32/36 progressive on my VW (a hackjob carb for a type 3, since they arent like a bug motor over the top carbs stick out of the engine bay) and it was super easy to tune.

Now i have a pair of Weber ICT 34's. Most of the tuning on a weber comes from the idle circuit. If you google redline weber tuning they have a really nice guide for tuning.

I wish the stock Solex carbs im replacing the webers with were half as easy to tune!