Work on the Jeepster has slowed to a crawl.  I have been busy, Rach had surgery and can’t help, and it has been hotter than the surface of the sun outside.  But this beast is not going to fix itself.  Sunday I got up early and decided to work until I started to melt.  First order of business is painting the gas tank area.  I knew this was going to be a messy job so I put on long sleeves, wrapped my hair up, and wore gloves and a face shield.  It all helped but I still made a mess out of myself.

The results are worth it.  I used Eastwood Rust Encapsulating Paint.   I have a spray can and a quart can.   The spray can came with a handy extension nozzle with an 18″ or so tube on it.  I used that on areas I could not get to directly.  For instance I snaked the tube into that sheet metal reinforcement cross member you can see in the above picture.  I just squeezed the trigger and pulled the tube out slowly.

Most of the surface and the frame rails I painted with a disposable brush and the quart can.  I ended up using most of the spray can and about 1/3 of a quart of paint under here.   I think it looks pretty nice though.  Sorry about the poor pictures, I could not take any at all when I was painting so I snapped these after I cleaned up.

Speaking of cleaning I made a hell of a mess.  My smartest move of the morning was putting down cardboard.  There would have been more on the cardboard except a lot ended up on me.  Normal hand cleaner got most of it off before it dried but the bits that really set up I had to use lacquer thinner on.  Lacquer thinner on skin is NOT something I recommend.

I was getting pretty hot and tired by this point but I decided to tear into the carburetor.  The car has been running worse and worse.  I realized the accelerator pump was not working at all so it was time to rebuild this thing.  Since the tag is still on it getting the proper rebuild kit was easy.  But I still hate carburetors so lets see how this goes.

As soon as I took the top off the problem was obvious.  The accelerator pump is all ripped up.  The rubber is rock hard.  I am not sure if the problem is 30 year old rubber or old rubber and ethanol not getting along.  Could be both.  Anyway every rubber part in there is suspect and will be replaced.  I took all the plastic parts off the choke but did not remove the choke mechanism or piston.  They looked good and why mess with it?

This little aluminum ball is a check valve for the accelerator pump.  It just drops into the bottom of the pump bore and is an easy part to lose.

The brass power valve in the bottom of the bowl was a bit of a problem.  I needed to unscrew it without buggering up the pin in the middle.

I used a file to modify this screwdriver for the job.  Worked great!  I took out the valve and the jets.

The venturi were next.

After the venturi the check valve comes out.  That little bar inside the red circle is a T-shaped bit of aluminum with a spring over the long arm of the “T”.  The other end pushes on the steel check valve ball.  The “T” just pulls out of the carb body.  The green oval is around two aluminum inserts that are part of the venturi mechanism.  They just fall out.

After turning over the carb body three Phillips screws removed the throttle assembly.  I cleaned all the parts with carb cleaner and blew everything dry with compressed air.

When installing the venturi there is a special screw and fiber washer that go in the center hole.

I installed the  new accelerator pump and keeper on the old spring and shaft.  The shaft here is installed with a new keeper.

The kit came with a new needle valve and seat.

After installing the new top cover gasket I installed the needle valve and float.  Here I am checking the float level.  Once I had that dialed in I installed the top cover and screwed it down tight.

There are probably 10 different adjustments for the carb but I am not going to mess with any of them.  I will just get the gas tank in and see where we are.  I put the carb back in the car and knocked off for the day.  By the way the instruction sheet that came with the carb kit was about useless.  The factory service manual had much better instructions and pictures.  Also taking lots of pictures is a really good idea.  Of course this thing is not running yet so maybe I am the wrong person to ask…