Hood hold-downs

One of the little annoying things on the Jeep has been the hood latches.  One of them likes to fall off and seems to only do it when I am underneath.  This happened again while I was re-installing the brake drums and it pissed me off.  The collection of parts that came with the Jeep had new ones so I decided to throw them on.  How hard could it be?

At some point someone (probably my father) installed the existing latches with stainless screws.  That should at least make disassembly possible.  Thanks!

While the screws were stainless the nuts, washers, and latches were not so getting the old latches off took some effort.  I cleaned up the stainless screws and found new hardware for everything else.

Then I found that one of the new latches is defective.  These two parts are supposed to be riveted together.  No rivet.


I rooted around and found a small screw and nut that would serve.

I painted the screw silver then installed it with Lock-Tite and cut off the rest of the screw.   This has to be as good as the rivet would have been.

Done!

Fixed the carburetor

I called National Carburetor and they were helpful.  My choices were to either send it back to them or take the top off myself and see what was up.  Since I can now remove this carb in about 9 minutes flat I figured that was the better option.

I hit my first problem almost immediately.  The base gasket came apart when I pulled the carb off.  Hope I have another one.

Yup, no way I am going to be able to reuse this.

I took the top off the carburetor and with my keen knowledge of automotive fuel systems I instantly spotted the problem.  Where is the accelerator pump?

Oh, there it is…

This is supposed to be one unit.  The plastic bit one right is screwed up somehow and now the metal part no longer snaps in like it should.  How will I fix this?  Then I had an idea…

This is why I never throw anything away.  I still had the center bit of the old accelerator pump.  I transferred the blue rubber seal, spring, and keeper from the busted-ass new pump and installed them on the core of the old pump.  This looks like it will work.

Here is the pump back in the top of the carburetor.

I even had a new gasket in my bag of tricks.  I scraped off the old gasket, cleaned the fuel filter, installed the carb, and it runs like a new one.

Update:  7/19/2017

I called National Carburetor about the accelerator pump.  They were very helpful and offered to send a new pump.  About 10 minutes later they called back and said that on this carb they don’t have pump assemblies.  They just replace the spring and cup seal on the existing pump.  I am not sure if I buy that story but what I have works and a new pump at the auto parts store is about $8 so it is not worth making a huge fuss over.  Call me a 90% satisfied customer at this point.  I would certainly still recommend them.  By the way carburetors just suck.  Give me a good computer controlled fuel injection system any day.