Carburetor issues?? maybe trash...

[jetman]

So this weekend I was moving a 8000# 5th wheel RV with my SWB. All was going great, till a common problem again popped up its ugly head. Motor started running ROUGH, began to loose power, barely got to where we needed to park the RV and my '83 305 w/ Edelbrock 4 bbl just died as we pulled onto the RV park. Truck seemed to be running extremely lean. Parked RV trailer and got truck back to the shop without a wrecker (had to fight it, LOTS of restarts).

Pulled the carburetor apart this morning, it was pretty full of some extremely fine brown/black trashy debris. Had a clear "inline" fuel filter in front of carburetor, it had loads of the "trash" in it. Thought the "trash" may be iron oxide from rusty 32 year old fuel tanks, but the trash was extremely smooth to the touch, not any abrasive material at all. Spoke to someone at the auto parts place, he suggested I replace all the 32 year old rubber fuel lines at the fuel pump and on the "fuel tank selector valve/manifold" which I did (about 6ft of rubber lines total). Went ahead and installed two (2) new Wix clear plastic 10 micron inline fuel filters in series, just ahead of the carburetor to catch the trash.

Question - Anyone have any experience with any deteriorating components (floats, hoses, gaskets, etc) generating carburetor clogging debris? Any successful fixes?

 

[86chevyc10]

never deteriorating floats but gaskets and hoses definitely. had to completely tear down the carb before and i used brake parts cleaner inside all the ventures and crevices in the carb. do you have a fuel pressure gauge to judge your pressure? that's the first thing i'd look for is pressure going to the carb.

 

[jetman]

I have a vacuum gauge which I have been lazy to install, think it will get put in pretty soon.
Yes, great idea on the fuel pressure gauge, will poke around and see if I can easily source one of those; would be mighty handy to help troubleshoot this truck the next time the engine decides to bog down and die on me while pulling a loaded trailer down the freeway...

 

[Quadrajet Power]

The fuel these days really breaks down some of the older components. Especially rubber pieces. Many of the internal parts in carbs have issues with the ethanol added. I have seen accelerator pumps with cups torn off from expanding, and needle/seat issues. Parts store kits are junk, so avoid those. Get parts from a reputable carb supply company.

Hope you get on the road and no more issues.