Weird Holley carb problem......

So last month I went to the monthly Lone Star Cougar Club brunch on Saturday morning. On the way there the carburetor on the blue GT-E started acting like it would not accept fuel. The car would quit, and then after a few minutes of waiting it would be OK for a mile or so, then quit. When it quit there was not gas coming from the accelerator pump but there was fuel pressure in the line to the carb.

Long story short, I bought a new Holley 600 CFM carb at Pep Boys and installed it in the restaurant parking lot. Car ran great all the way home. Problem solved! Or so I thought.

Last weekend I went to start the car and it would not even pop. Same problem, different carburetor!!!

I took the new carb off, and removed the screws from the front float bowl. To my surprise instead of finding dirt, the float bowl was about 1/2 full of water. I then proceeded to remove the drain plug from the gas tank and was rewarded by about a quart of water before getting a solid stream of fuel.

Put the carb back together and the car would run but the accelerator pump wouldn’t work! Took the carb back off, removed the accelerator pump nozzle and found the dribble pin was corroded badly. Had to work it out of the hole using an ice pick, then chucked it in my drill and polished off the corrosion with a piece of scotchbrite.

All back together now and runs great! I plan to take the original carb apart to see what’s going on there but I think it will be corrosion related.

I have a friend that installs a marine fuel/water separator in all of his cars for exactly this reason. He says drains about a cup of water out of the separator every six months or so.

There wouldn’t happen to be ethanol in your fuel would there?

I was going to say that I figured ethanol might actually help in this case as long as it was below the saturation point (which I believe is where phase separation begins): epa.gov/oms/regs/fuels/rfg/waterphs.pdf

I would go talk to the people at the gas station where you filled it up… They probably know all about this problem by now. You might be able to get their insurance company to pay for the carb at least.