Captain Obvious

Gotcha. And if you're running a closed loop system that uses lamdas, you should be able to control the mix good enough that you don't light the cat on fire. Good luck with the TIG. Run pure Argon. I wish I was better with mine, but I'm sure some of the faults are my own... I don't use a dedicated grinder for my electrodes (which is a no-no), and I don't have high-freq start, so I assume that my tips are contaminated before I really even get started. Sometimes it turns out good, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm no welder.

The only thing the shape of the float submerged matters much. I would theorize that you want the tapered nose because it would more gradually slope the pressure on the valve up and also not allow any trapped bubbles stuck under the float. But other than stuff like that, I can't see it mattering much. The problem is, as you mentioned, denser fuel will cause the float to sit higher. A higher float causes the valve to close sooner, and a valve that closes sooner results in a lower level in the bowl. And the issue is that I've had troubles getting the level high enough without the float actually hitting the underside of the lid. You remember this discussion you and I had almost ten years ago? I think this was all related to this same issue: https://www.classiczcars.com/forums/topic/43889-fuel-bowl-level-and-bending-tab-not-working/

Spackle is curing. We'll see how it all turns out! So in the meantime, I had a pair of old round tops here. History is I rebuilt these a number of years ago (in 2011... My how time flies) and ran them on my car for a little while before swapping them out for a pair of flat tops. The point is... I had the float levels on these in spec ten years ago and they've been sitting dry in a box since. In theory, they should still be in spec. Well guess what... Here's the front: and here's the rear: The floats have a neutral tilt when the valves close, but the level is way low. The bottom line is that the only thing that could have changed is the fuel. So I guess that brings up a new question... "OK, so it looks like fuel has changed over the last ten years. Is it going to be like that from here on moving forward, or is it going to switch back at some point in the future?"

duffman, Your results are about the same as mine. Able to bend the tab to get it "to work", but the tilt is uncomfortable and runs the risk of hitting the lid or inside of the bowl. Not to make it sound like I'm glad you've had problems too, but it's nice to not be the only one dealing with this. I should be able to spackle the ballasts over to day and give it a day for the epoxy to fully cure. I'll run final results then and let you know!

I did a little digging into the subject of gasoline changing over the years, and it's absolutely conceivable that there have been density changes as part of pollution reduction actions over the years. Not my area of expertise and I don't know what I'm looking at though, but here's a small snippet of the info out there: https://www.sunocoracefuels.com/tech-article/specific-gravity-matter https://www.epa.gov/fuels-registration-reporting-and-compliance-help/gasoline-properties-over-time https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100B3YI.pdf https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100T5J6.pdf

Agreed. From what I can gather from the various discussions about setting the float levels, I'm not the only one that has had difficult to explain results getting the levels correct. But i think most people just bend the tab and eventually get it close enough where it will work and they get tired of messing with it and call it a day. In fact, I have done that in the past. But this time I just couldn't get it close enough to even call it a day, so I started digging deeper for the root cause. It could be that the original floats are now on the knife edge of being able to be adjusted into spec due to changing fuel over the years. And I'm thinking that maybe these 72 carbs (which have slightly different float geometries than the previous years) are closer to that edge than other years? I'd be interested in having carb experts weigh in as well. I'm pretty sure they aren't ballasting the floats. I also wonder what would happen if I checked my float levels with gas purchased in some other part of the country far from where I am.

Are you in a part of the world that requires a cat? Or is there some other reason you feel the need to add one?

So today I decided to add some weight in a more permanent way... First of all... Anyone ever wonder what's inside the float? How is the mounting tab anchored? Well, it looks like this: So armed with the knowledge that the mounting tab does not extend very far down into the float... I drilled hole in the float: And made a brass slug to press into the hole: Rinsed and repeated for the other float and now I have these: In case anyone wonders... The little threaded hole is so I can run a small screw into the brass ballast slug as a removal handle. I figure that until I'm sure about the amount of weight, I might want to pull it back out. And since the hole is blind (I didn't drill all the way through), there's no way to grab it. Works like this: Here's the results in the front carb (long ear). Level is a little high, but that's easily fixable with a little tab bending: Long ear float tilt looks like this: And the rear (short ear results): With it's corresponding float tilt: Again, it's fantastic when the theory lines up with realty. The plan now is to spackle over the ballast plugs with JB Weld since it's fuel resistant and then do the final adjustments. I still have no answer to "Am I the only one that has this problem", but at least I have a solution.

Oh, and before anybody asks "Why did you pick 9 grams of extra weight?" The answer is "because that's what I found in my scraps box."

I messed around a little today with additional weight on the float. I wired a chunk of scrap steel to the bottom of one of my new aftermarket floats. The float weighs about 9-10 grams and I added about 9 grams of extra weight. For the test, I just wired it into place so it wouldn't fall off. Looked like this: I put that contraption on the 72 short ear lid. Float tab looked like this: Since this is the rear lid, it's still one mm low, but there's plenty of compliance in the tab bending to bring it up a mm: Here's the float tilt. Very close to neutral: And then I took the same float, with the same tab and put it into the front long ear lid. The result was this: With a darn near perfect tilt as well: So it's nice that the theory and geometry agree with reality. But still the big outstanding question is.... Why do I need to go through these lengths of adding weight to get the floats to behave properly??? Special extra-dense low volatility North-East summer blend gasoline?

So I also understand that this whole thing is like trying to "prove reality". What is reality, and how do you prove it? It's philosophy. For all you know, you are currently in a coma laying in a hospital right now and this is all a dream. You had a bad car accident six months ago and none of this is real. You might wake up tomorrow and find that all of this has been a dream. You really just can't prove it. So I guess I'm just trying to attach some kind of objective guide to a subjective life because that's all I got. If I don't know what to believe or who to trust, my conservative nature turns me to the long standing big names in media that have a long standing reputation and skin in the game. If a couple big names in media all say the same thing, then I give it credence. And if a situation gets beyond that, the courts decide. All the new on-line sources that have been around for just a couple years. With patriotic sounding names. Not going there. Either side leaning. So you might call me a sheeple, right? Following the old-school establishment? While others are being lured off to the side by someone whispering sweet nothings in their ear... "follow me... everyone else is fake." So I gotta ask... Who's the sheeple?

Here's another media bias chart, but I don't like it as much as the other one. Why? Because it makes no distinction as to the reliability of the source, just the political lean. The other chart above produces the bell curve by rating both reliability AND political leaning and I think it provides a much better "at-a-glance" view of the situation. I also don't like the fact that this chart it's a mish-mash mix of "opinion" and "news" sources. For example... Fox News Opinion (oxymoron) is listed as far right as you can go, while Fox News "news only" is still listed as right leaning, but not as much. That's fine and all makes sense to me. My issue is that they have CNN listed as "on-line news opinion only" (another oxymoron) and it's in the leftmost column. So is that CNN's opinion category, or CNN's news category? It's not split up like Fox is. Same with MSNBC. Other's make perfect sense, like Wall Street Journal". Their news section is in the middle, while their opinion section leans right. I get it. But they should provide the same treatment to all the media outlets and many of them they didn't separate the news and opinion. But anyway, here's another chart with all my (clearly my opinion) caveats: That one came from here >> https://www.allsides.com/blog/new-allsides-media-bias-chart-announcing-version-4

Epoch Times is on the chart... Look way down in the lower right hand corner. On the political left-to-right scale it's in the "Hyper-Partisan Right" section. And on the reliability scale, it's in the "Contains Misleading Info" section. Interesting to note that they weren't that bad off a couple years ago. In previous versions of the chart, they were closer to the middle and considered more reliable. But then there's now. Now they are actually rated worse than OAN and Newsmax and one small notch above Infowars and the National Enquirer. I gotta give National Enquirer a shout-out though... they're close to the middle. It's all unreliable garbage, but at least it's not hyper-partisan garbage! The original chart came from here>> https://www.adfontesmedia.com/

Thanks for the input guys. I considered both shortening the needle valve and adding weight to the floats. At this point, it seems like I'm going to have to do something like that even though (in theory) I should not need to. I keep coming back to changes in gasoline formulation and density. Namerow, I completely understand what you're talking about with the wacky geometry. That's one of the things that has me wanting to keep the floats "about neutral" at valve shut-off. Because if you bend the tab down so far... too far... you can actually run the risk of the geometry changing direction and opening the valve back up again at extreme float angles. the valve pin kinda "slips off the downhill side" of the tab - if that makes any sense. I'm not sure you can achieve that extreme of an angle with the short ear lids, but with the 72 fronts you can. I need a way to keep the floats more neutral. Next chance I get, I think I'm going to mess around with adding some weight to see if I can fix this.

I think I understand the sentiment though... You're thinking that if there were something layered on the top of the tab, the float would sit more level, right? It's a little counter-intuitive, but that wouldn't work. That layer would just close the valve sooner thereby lowering the level. Yes, the float would sit with less tilt, but the level would drop accordingly.

Hmmm... Thanks for the input, but I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Are you suggesting that I add material to the top side of the tab? If so, that would only make matters worse. The problem is that the tab is already too high. I need it lower, not higher.

So here's some pics of a trial run with the 72 rear (short ear) lid. First attempt. Float tab looks like this: That float tab resulted in a fuel level and float tilt like this: Bending the tab a couple times bought me to here: Which resulted in a fuel level and float tilt like this: I'm not quite hitting the lid yet, but I'm very close. And I'm still pretty far away from my target level. I don't think I've got the compliance left to bring it up to target without hitting the lid.

I didn't Archimedes the new and old floats to actually measure the respective volumes, but yes... I took a bunch of mechanical measurements to verify that the new aftermarket floats are the very close in size and shape as the old OEM floats. And I also weighed them with a (non-NIST) scale and they all came out to 10g. And in addition to all that, I did check the wet float level with the old OEM float as well and it was about the same. So the bottom line with all that is it appears that it's not the float that changed. That brings me to either the fuel changed, or my aftermarket float valves are more sensitive and close sooner than the originals.

The filter has an anti-drainback valve that keeps the filter full even when the engine is shut off. No differential pressure even when first starting. And when you change the oil and put on an empty filter? There's no oil in the filter, so you can't bypass dirty oil. There's no oil to bypass,,, clean or dirty.

If I get a chance, I'll put the rear lid (short ear) together and take a couple pics. Both lids have complications. The short ear lid has the float pivot point closer to the underside of the lid. That means there is less float tilt available before the float hits the lid. The long ear lid allows more float tilt before the float hits the lid, but there's another problem...Since the whole system was designed originally with short ears, the shape of the float was designed to never bump into the inside of the bowl. But if you go extreme tilting of the float (further than it was ever designed to tilt), it WILL contact the inside of the bowl. The bottom line is... Too much tilt is a bad thing. And as an anecdotal piece of info... If you look at the pics in the old FSM's you can see where they "expect" the fuel level to be on the float when there is enough pressure to close the valve and the relative tilt on the float. Note that the float is shown as pretty much no tilt. Float is "neutral" and from a design standpoint, I think that makes a lot of sense:

Haha! I think that Stranglehold is one of the best pieces of music ever created. But that doesn't qualify him to be a spokesman for a medical (sounding) organization to "take the truth directly to the people". In fact, for me, it does the opposite. It makes me question everything: America’s Frontline Doctors takes the truth directly to the people, with a cross-country road tour headlined by AFLDS.org founder Dr. Gold delivering “The Religion of Public Health”, a profound diagnosis of 2020’s viral propaganda, and also featuring special guests Ted Nugent and additional AFLDS physicians and attorneys at select venues. If I want the truth, it doesn't come from organizations like that. It comes from here:

Awesome! That looks like a fantastic event!!

Thanks for the generous offer, my friend! If I can't figure this out I'll take you up on that. I've thought about running rear tops, but they're giving me the same problem. Level is higher, but not high enough. Arrrrrgh!!

But since none of us can be an expert on everything, we all need other people to be our experts for us. And if we want to stay informed, we need news because we can't be everywhere at the same time looking with our own two eyes. The problem is in the choice of experts and the choice of news.* Me? I'm conservative. I believe that the cream eventually rises to the top. And of course it takes a little longer, but by the time it gets there, it's been vetted and investigated because the stakes are higher for the top. That's why I recommended the old school names who have a long standing reputation and have enough money to make them worth going after in court if they report false stuff. In other words... They have skin in the game. And because of that, the stuff they report has been vetted pretty thoroughly. If they screw up big, their reputation is at stake and their pockets are deep enough to make them worth going after. If a bunch of the old school big name news organizations say that "so-and'so did such and such" then I give it some credence. Until then, not so much. The smaller newer on-line organizations with no money? They pretty much say whatever they want and they're making money off the sensationalism. Sensationalism sells. It sells clicks, and it sells opinions. But it hasn't been vetted. And they can pass it all off as "opinion" anyway, so there's no accountability. Cream rises to the top. There's a reason. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *If your expert is some guy on the internet posting stuff on social media, then I think it's time for an expert upgrade. If a quick google search of your expert turns up hits of them being banned from posting because of mis-information, then I think it's time for an expert upgrade. If your medical expert has Ted Nugent as a spokesman at traveling shows, it's time for an upgrade. If your choice for news is a "left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook Group and corresponding website. Established in 2012, it publishes false information, hyperpartisan content, and clickbait" it's time for a news upgrade. If your news is closely affiliated with the Falun Gong religious movement and "contains a mix of straight news, religious belief, conspiracy-peddling, Sinophobia, science denialism, legitimate grievance, and political expediency", then it's upgrade time.

Nope. 72 Long valve. Right on spec. And the rear set-up does about the same thing. For the pics, I just grabbed the long ear lid 50/50 chance. On edit - But that's a really good question. Because what started this whole thing in the beginning was a mixmash of incorrect parts including a short valve on the long ear lid. I was hoping that with all new parts in the right positions, all the problems would magically go away.