Girl Power: Send your carburetor to Riley’s Rebuilds, the teenage tuners

Hagerty.com ^ | 08/25/2022 | Steven Cole Smith

[DaxtonBrown]

“Carburetors are for people who can’t figure out how to fix fuel injection.”

Carburetors are for people who don’t want to fix a fried computer in the middle of nowhere, but can fix a carb ‘good enough’ with a screwdriver. What do replacement computers and a full set of injectors cost these days? A rebuild kit for my spare edelbrocks is $45 and good to go for another 100k miles.

[PUGACHEV]

Good for them! I never had the patience you need to rebuild carburetors.

[Pollard]

A carburetor is a device used to ensure that a engine will not start in really cold weather.

Never had an issue. Helps that I know how to adjust the automatic choke or use a manual choke. In some locales, you need to adjust the automatic choke twice a year for best performance.

[Pollard]

I just had my fuel injectors replaced yesterday on my 99 Suburban, and it’s running really rough now.
The guy said that my plugs need to be replaced for it to smooth out. That new plugs will burn hotter and get all of the gunk out.

Find a new "guy" cuz this one's an idiot of he replaced injectors before spark plugs if it needed those. Sound like he's taking wild guesses and making things up so that you won't know that he's making wild guesses.

Find someone who owns and knows how to use a scan tool. A good scan tool on a 99 GM will tell them not only if there's a misfire but which cylinder or cylinders it is. Oxygen sensor readings will tell much.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Katie has good taste in music. :)

[BobL]

Nice gimmick and maybe ok if trained well. But I’d rather have a guy who could beat the crap out of me with his pinky rebuilding something that I plan to use when driving.

[Semper Vigilantis]

Exactly!

[SheepWhisperer]

Boooooooooooooooooooooo!

After rebuilding three 69 Camaros AND the engines, I read your comment as based on either ignorance, or flat out prejudice. My cars started every time. Carb was NEVER an issue. EVER. If the carb needed seasonal adjustment I did it and could see the problem in advance of any failure.

You go Riley!
Don’t let the panty-wearing teslaweenies who have never turned a wrench cramp your style!

...that is all

[MV=PY]

I hope the business model works. It takes skill, marketing, delivery, mgmt, and drive.

Love entrepreneurs!

[brianl703]

Last time I bought injectors, I got a set of 8 for $100.

[brianl703]

My first car was a 1986 Dodge Omni.

Only carbureted vehicle I ever owned. Also only vehicle I ever owned that wouldn’t start reliably. It was already 10 years old when I got it for the $850 I paid for it.

I was happy to get rid of it.

By way of comparison, I recently inherited my dad’s 1984 Chevy Cavalier, which sat undriven for 12 years.

It has throttle-body injection. And all it took to get it running again was a new battery, new fuel pump, and to get it running right a new fuel tank (rusted) and a new fuel filter.

Let me know how you well you think a carbureted vehicle sitting with gas in it for 12 years would run. Could you (assuming that the tank, pump and filter are OK) just dump the old gas, put fresh gas in, and expect it to run right?

From what I’ve seen of lawn equipment with carburetors, no way.

Oh, by the way, the 12-year-old gas in that car was certainly 10% ethanol gas, it’s all that’s allowed to be sold in this area.

[brianl703]

and the last time I bought a computer it cost $50 (used). And it wasn’t that the one I was replacing failed, it’s that it was an older version which did not support mass-air sensors.

I have NEVER had a computer failure. My oldest fuel-injected vehicle is now 38 years old and it is running just fine with the original computer.

[nutmeg]

bookmark

[RandallFlagg]

I didn’t tell the whole story.
I took my truck to them to change out the fuel pump and filter last month. Explaining that I was feeling some hesitation while accelerating on the highway. He ran tests and said my injectors were going bad. I scheduled the replacement for last Friday morning.
One of the guys that works the outgoing shift here at work this morning has the same make and model suburban as I do, and he’s a lot more experienced with it. He said that the spark plug issue sounds about right.
I have a new set of plugs sitting in my back seat and was going to install them yesterday, but yesterday was my last day off. If I screwed it up, I wouldn’t be able to get to work until it gets fixed.
They said it should be okay to drive until my next days off.

[maddog55]

I’m running an Edelbrock AVS2 because I couldn’t get the Rochester to run right!!

[Pollard]

The guy said that my plugs need to be replaced for it to smooth out. That new plugs will burn hotter and get all of the gunk out.

Could be some truth to that. New injectors squirting more fuel in than the old ones so the spark needs to be good to burn the extra fuel.

People don't change spark plugs anymore because platinum came out and are good for 100k miles. People that buy a good running vehicle with 130k or something on it assume it's been tuned up I guess. I had some very happy customers when I fixed their cars by putting new plugs in it. They all assumed hundreds of dollars because "that's just what it costs to fix newer cars".

I was a mobile mechanic back in FL, though I did most work at home. The mobile thing was easier to get an Occupational License. Have a shop for auto repair and the FL EPA wants to get involved.

There were several times people would bring me a rough running car that was pushing 200k miles. I'd ask if they ever did a tune up and they'd say no or that they didn't know because they bought it used. I'd look at the spark plugs and see that they were factory which have different part numbers than even aftermarket OEM. Pull the plugs and they were nasty so I'd replace them.

For Fords, I'd always buy them from the dealer because Fords are picky. On a v8 or v6, they actually had two different part numbers from the factory, one for the right side and one for the left side. Or front and back on transverse mounted engines in front wheel drive cars. According to the repair manual, half the plug set was reverse polarity. The dealer however sold one type to replace all but they still seemed to work better than the Motorcraft from the part store which also had a different part number.

For GM, I buy AC Delco Original Equipment but those are safe to get from the parts store. AC Delco might make 2-3 different aftermarket plugs that will fit and work but only one will be OE.

The above is for a 99 Suburban from rockauto.

Any decent American brand of platinum would probably be fine. As per a Honda mechanic friend of mine, always buy Japanese made plugs for a Japanese car. European(German/Bosch) made plugs for a European vehicle and American made plugs for an American brand vehicle, especially with everything having aluminum heads these days. He said everyone's version of those metric threads are just slightly different. He's had to replace heads on Hondas because someone put American plugs in it and when he pulled the plugs, they pulled the aluminum threads of the head out with them.

Always use that silver/grey anti-lock thread compound on aluminum heads too. I've got a 2001 F150 with 5/4 liter which has aluminum heads and 8 coil over plugs and those plugs are 6-7 inches down a vertical hole. Coils are half way under the injector rail and the firewall curves forward and the back cylinders are underneath it. Real pita and not something I want to mess up the threads on.

[RandallFlagg]

The plugs I got are the AC Delco iridium kind. The mechanic recommended them, and it’s the ones that came up on the parts store system.

[Vaduz]

Parts department dream money come true fast fail is cash flow.

[Pollard]

Iridium is fairly new tech. I’d never looked into them but a quick search basically just says they last longer. Rockauto lists an AC Delco iridium plug that also says Original Equipment so it must be a direct replacement for the double platinum. Double platinum probably came in it from the factory. I don’t think iridium was a thing in 99.

[Don W]

I prefer to use the high-heat anti-seize: Kop-r-kote or the like.