I got ahould of Junkys in Atlanta thru Hemmings and they say they can restore my Stage 1 q-jet and recolor everything . ANyone ever use them. I keep hearing about the carb doctor any ideas the price and specifics there? I am just nervous shipping my carb somewhere and having this done 600 miles away. I am trying to do a concours resto and want the color restored. I am guessing this will make a difference.
I have found that vendors in Hemmings are top notch. Hemmings has a policy where a complaint against a vendor is taken very seriously.
John, Never heard of them, but it looks they are cutting costs by plating the air valves in yellow cad.. instead of silver zinc.. If your worried about sending and expensive carb out to be done, I do preform the concourse Q-jet resto's in house now. I am doing several right now.. been meaning to add this to my website, but there never seems to be enough time in the day.. Thx JW
John,I tried the Carb Doc this past week and he emailed me back saying he only restores and sells his own carbs on ebay.Makes no sense to me as many of his carbs sell in the $200.00 range but his restamped stage1 carbs always go for big bucks with the same amount of work done on both carbs.I offered to send a 7040240 core but he didn't want to rebuild it for me. Jim can you give us a idea of cost on your rebuilds?
I emailed him also a few weeks ago when he had a Buick carb listed, asking him if he accepted carbs for rebuilding and tuning and got the same response as you did. If we get spring bonuses again this year at work, ray: I want spend the money and have my carb done up right. I think it would be well worth it. But now with the possibility of John Osbourne getting out of the carb tuning biz... o No: Looks like Jim W. may get my business. For some reason Jim, I was under the impression that you farmed out the carbs to John.
The standard Perf Q-jet rebuild, with rebushing the primary throttle shafts, all new choke pulls, float ect, and all the typical Q-jet "fixes" jetted for your combo is $325.00, if you have a very nice core, that's not all worn out and corroded, I can get you into a good rebuild for maybe $50 less.. but I haven't seen too many of them lately.. For a body recolor, add 90.00 For concours resto, it will depend on the condition of the core you send me, but they typically add $125-175 to the job.. for all the plating and extra work.. Just a quick note... Some carbs get corroded pretty badly, and I can assure you that I won't be sending anything out of this shop that well.. for lack of a better term "looks like s**t..." if it's badly corroded, I will typically at least bead blast it, and spray it with a little clearcoat.... They end up looking like the carb in on this engine.. http://www.trishieldperf.com/Level 1 engine specs.htm I would say I run across this in maybe 1 out of 10 carbs I do.. JW
While I have certainly have used many of John's carbs on engines I have built, that would only be because a customer had John do a carb for them, before we started in on the engine buildup.. so it's possible that, one time when you were here, you may have seen one of John's rebuilds sitting on my shelves in the engine room, and I mentioned it was done by John.. so I can see where you might have come up with that assumption. My genesis in the business was, after tech school, I spent 7 years in a local service station.. back in the late 80's.. when carbs were on vitually every car we worked on.. And of course we started Drag racing with a stock STG 1 Buick, and it's Q-jet.. So it's safe to say that I have built 100's of Q-jets in the last nearly 30 years.. but just recently started doing the concourse rebuilds, which are really just about appearance.. BTW... I do have a pretty good selection of early 70's cores on hand.. (no, no STG 1 stuff.. sorry...)
jim do you have any carters for the nailhead (66) for sale by any chance that are rebuilt. thanks jim
So JW , I looked at the thread and the carb pic you sent a link to shows a silver carb. I was under the impression that these q-jets were a gold color? With aluminum baseplates and some other parts being steel and zinc coated. The primary pump lever is what, green? Maybe I am getting my years mixed up. By my addition I come up with about 600 for a concours redo. maybe a little less depending onn condition.
So I read this wrong I think. The silver is a lesser carb corew that did get a rebuild and not a recolor right?
Yes, your correct on that John.. That was just a sample of what happens if you don't want to step up for the recolor, and your carb is corroded.. And your about right on the money for a concourse job.. JW
Yes, your correct on that John.. That was just a sample of what happens if you don't want to step up for the recolor, and your carb is corroded.. And your about right on the money for a concourse job.. Yes, not cheap, but it's alot of work to do one correctly.. if you had yours for a while, consider yourself way ahead of the game.. as one of the 246 carbs I am doing right now, the guy paid... well... enought to buy a really decent used car.. JW
Jim, What type of "coloring" is done on the airhorn and float bowl? At the factory, the process was zinc dichromate, if I recall right. I had a stint in the chem lab at Rochester Products in the mid-80's, and those ion Cardon (sp?) platers were big, stinky and messy! Matter of fact, the whole carb production process was big, stinky and messy! Also, for those of you interested in a complete, "correct" concours QJ restoration, the stamped letter on the secondary metering rod hanger had no significance to the carb number it was going into. When the QJ was going down the assembly line, one of the final stages before going to the flow room (all carbs were calibrated on a wet-flow bench -- RPD had 100's of wet flow benches!) was to gauge the distance from the secondary fuel jets to the airhorn. Depending on what the gauge read, secondary hangers were installed accordingly. The stamped letter referenced a hanger with the secondary rod holes at a specific height. This was to be absolutely certain (due to production variances) that the secondary metering rods sat at the exact height in the secondary jet that engineering called for. Remember, there was no adjusting the secondary fuel system. I wish I could remember more, but producing a carb back in those days, from an in-house foundry and giant screw machines making itty-bitty screws, to the stamping of the stamped components and the umpteen machining processes, and finally to the assembly lines and flow room, mass producing 1000's a carbs a days for YEARS was a big undertaking!
