When we last left our intrepid DIY auto hobbiest, he had thrown in the towel on his twin 40mm Dellorto Carburetors and declared defeat - those pesky Dells had proven to be his match and refused to run as well as everyone knows they should (Re-read from the top of this thread to get the whole, sad history). They were pulled, drained, aired out overnight then tagged and bagged and sent via UPS to Dave Hogland at Blackline Racing out in Murray, Utah, not all that far from the Bonneville Salt Flats (See? Blackline Racing - Out on the Flats! Building engines that WIN!)
Once I described what they had in them, what the engine is and how they had been responding, Dave described, to a "T", how they had been acting (even corresponding to my air/fuel mixture gauge response) and told me of a "most likely" fix:
- Drop the primary venturiis from 34mm to 32mm
- Drop the Main jets from 162.5 to 130
- Drop the idle jets from 65 to 45
- Drop the accelerator pump jets from 60 to 35
Dave cleaned them and rebuilt them with the above jetting and tuned them on a 1915cc engine with similar characteristics to my 2,110 (cam, compression, etc). He also noted on my poop sheet that I run Bosch Platinum 8-range plugs (W8AP) and recommended that I go to an NGK non-platinum BR6HS spark plug gapped at .032 (for my Magna Spark II hotter coil) because he hasn't had a lot of good luck with Platinum-tipped plugs in VW engines. I used Platinum plugs on a LOT of snowmoblie racing engines (both carbureted and EFI) with great luck but, hey! PLugs are cheap, right? so those got swapped out, too.
Remember, my biggest complaints were a big hesitation/bog right off-idle and a transition hesitation at almost any speed above idle.
I am THRILLED to tell yah that both of those are totally gone and these things are running so smoothly they feel exactly like the EFI in my Nissan Rogue.
I pulled them from the shipping box, did absolutely nothing to them, installed them on my intake manifolds, connected the linkage and started it right up. I saw none of the coughing or puking that I had become used to at cold start-up and it settled down to a nice idle after about 15 seconds (?!?!?!?). A quick road test around the neighborhood showed zero hesitation at any rpm up through third gear and when you stomp on it at any RPM (below 3K - it's a quiet neighborhood) it just simply takes off - no hesitation, no lag, no bogging, it just goes.
Stan was right about me, I'm a cheap kinda guy living on retirement income and having this done was not inexpensive, but considering that I spent 20 friggin YEARS trying to figure them out and failing (and probably spending almost as much over those years in wrong parts and labor and just messing around), I think this was money VERY well spent. It certainly pays to pay someone who really knows what the hell they're doing and the guys at Blackline certainly do. They have a 3 week backlog on Carb stuff and a 6 Month backlog on engines, but these guys are really, really good.
If I had started with carbs that had been running and were appropriately set up for my engine I would have started out on a much different foot, but that's whiskey under the bridge. I've finally gotten to where I want to be, this engine is running like a watch and it is really fun to drive.
