[Chrysler300] Carbs and the importance of the Model year supplement

Club, I am working on a D that the owner spent a large sum of money on to get his carbs rebuilt. The rebuilder, although offered the printed factory service manuals by the owner, including the D supplement, chose to ignore them as he stated he had “plenty of old carb experience, and did not need them”. Well as one can imagine what happened to the rebuild of these carbs. In the D supplement on the first line of section 8 it states that the front and rear carbs are different, in bold under lined text. The rebuild of these WCFB carbs are cosmetically perfect, I mean these carbs look great sitting atop the big hemi, the problem is they do not work. The rebuilder mixed the parts up and the rear body is now installed on the front throttle plate with the front air horn in the front position on the engine. The front body is located in the rear position, but that body has no provision to provide vacuum to the choke pull off system, whereas the rear body that is installed now on the front, does. What this did is created a vacuum leak into the front air horn and caused the choke to stay on all the time as there is no vacuum porting in the front carb body, that is now installed incorrectly in the rear location to pull the heated air up from the exhaust manifold. Next is the jets, the supplement specifically calls out that one is not to mix the jets up as they are similar, but different, and to note the location that they are removed from. The supplement however does not tell what jet size goes in what location, or on what carb, front or rear? I did a lot of digging and spoke to Jim Bartuska (the clubs librarian) at our fall meet, and he directed me to look at the Carter “Big Book”. While this book is not online I did find the correct excerpts for the D, and also stumbled on the E information as well, after an exhaustive google search. These two data sheets are now on the clubs web site in the tech department under fuel, thanks to Mr. Merritt. These data sheets describe the proper location of the Carter Jet numbers to their relationship in the carb body that they are install in. One important point to note is that the front and rear secondary jet are different sizes and one must pay attention to what carb they get installed in, very tiny numbers, get out your magnifying glass. Also the supplement points out that the 10 Degree throttle plates are to be installed in the Secondary bores where the 15 Degree throttle valve plates are to be installed in the Primary bores, of course the rebuilder did not read this note when he did the restoration of the throttle linkage .

So in conclusion, if one is to hire a rebuilder make sure that you require that they read and use the Letter car supplement while doing the project. I would go so far as to inform them to pay attention to the finer points of the jet location, and throttle plate angles. Sadly this rebuilder did not do this so we can use this example as a lesson learned.

Link to the 300D Carter data sheet

http://www.chrysler300club.com/rcmstuff/carbs/specs/Carter%201958D.pdf

Jamie Hyde

585-465-0067 cell/text