The Texas Connection

With the bodywork alterations and preparation well under way I was looking on EBay for a twin carburettor system that would fit on the buggies engine. The single draft 40mm Weber that was fitted just did not have the performance that I required from the buggy. I decided that I could sell the manifold and carburettor on eBay and raise about £100-£150 towards the cost and was hoping as I had been watching the prices of the twin Weber IDF 40 systems go up and up as they where selling for about£600.00 at that time that I would be able to find one that was suitable for the 1600 VW flat four engine. I hoped there was as I new from research that the addition of two carburettors to the engine would provide a better performance. I checked and double-checked the information needed to jet them:




The 40IDF sizes required for the carburetters where:
Venturi: 28mm
Main Gas: 1.30
Main A/C: 2.00
Emulsion Tube: F11
Idle jet: 0.55
Pump Jet: 50.

Armed with this information I was able to look for my Carburettors. After some time a match came up but it was not in England it was in Kentucky, Texas. I placed several bids on the carburetors, manifold and linkage kit. The auction eventually ended and I had won them. They took nearly two weeks to arrive and where not delivered to my house because of customs duty. There was approximately £80 of duty that needed to be paid on pick up of them. Even so this was not bad, as the carburetors had cost me £555.00 in total.

The day the carburetters arrived I was happily installing them after cleaning them thoroughly with carb cleaner. The engine would not start and the accelerator pump gaskets where leaking badly. I contacted the Weber dealer in my area and arrange for two new accelerator pump diaphragms to be sent to me by next day delivery.

The new accelerator pump diaphragms arrived the next day and I oiled the diaphragms and placed them in each of the carburettors. This stopped the pumps from leaking and the engine would run only if you pumped the accelerator. I had a blockage somewhere in the main jets.

Luckily I found an article on http://www.superbeetles.com/performance101/jun.htm
that talked about setting up Weber carburetors. After reading this and the following article:http://www.superbeetles.com/performance101/jul.htm . The articles where very interesting as they talked you through setting up the carburettors.

After following the articles I was ready to try again and installed the carburettors onto the manifolds. This time I had also replaced the manifolds oiling the gaskets at all the joins. There was no improvement and I was very puzzled. I took the Carburettors off and took them to a friend who was also a performance car mechanic. He said that the carburettors typically Weber's had very small ventri in the body work of the carburetor and sometimes these get blocked. A week later and 4 tins of Carb cleaner he brought them back and I re-installed them. They fired up beautifully and the engine ticked over.

It was soon noticeable that the carbs where sitting almost on the exhausts. This was potentially boiling the fuel in the Carburetors. The only option was to purchase the Redline Weber linkage kit and manifold kit.