[gtobird]

My 68 wagon's Quadrajet is leaking when parked. It had a 68 Buick carb (7028240) that had a Pontiac baseplate on it. When I bought the car, my plans were to eventually replace the entire engine with my spare 68 Firebird 400 engine which is complete and correct right down to the carburetor. Since I don't want to replace the engine right now, I figured I would rebuild my Pontiac 400 carb (7028264) and for the time being use it on the existing 350 engine (built to HO specs with 068 grind cam and Ram Air exhaust manifolds).

Of course, Murphy threw me a curve ball. The Pontiac 400 quadrajet has fuel fitting inlet threads that need to be heli-coiled and the shop that is going to do it is booked up for a while. So, onto my quadrajet boneyard. I have another Buick carb which is almost identical to the 7028240 Buick carb currently on the wagon, except it has an Olds baseplate on it and was a factory replacement carb, more than likely built in later years (no date code). Other than having the wrong baseplate, it's a super nice core with nothing wrong with it. So, my thought is to just take the Pontiac baseplate that was attached to the Buick carb on the car, put a kit in it and drive the car until I get the other carb done.

So, what is the issue? Well, the 68 Pontiac 400 carb has idle bypass air on it. Neither of the Buick carb bodies or air horns were machined for it, but.......... the Pontiac baseplate I'm going to re-use from the Buick carb already on the wagon was already drilled for idle bypass air. Basically the idle bypass air was therefore non-operative. Since I'm going to now use the Pontiac baseplate on the better Buick core, it's really simple for me to drill the two holes in the main body cavities and grind the slots in the airhorn to make the idle bypass air functional. The question is whether or not this will be an improvement, or deterrent. The car seemed to run okay without it. Once I grind the slots in the airhorn, I don't think I can go back to making it non-operative.

All opinions are welcome and of course, I've been in contact with Guru Cliff on the build of my Pontiac 400 carb, but thought I would throw this brain teaser on my hybird carb build out to this crowd first.

Old Joe