2bbl carb stall out - problem solved

MonacoBlue

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2017
Messages
1,187
Reaction score
1,950
Location
NC
Just wanted to post about a stall out problem I’d been having on a 73 Monaco 400 v8 2bbl (rebuilt from Autoline). Car would start fine and run for about 5 minutes, but as soon as it was warmed up, it would stall out.

I swapped out the carb with a $50 eBay replacement carb today, and amazingly it fixed the problem. Got rid of flat spot under acceleration also, and it idles great now. I suspect either there is dirt in the old Autoline carb or, as one member has suggested, the air horn is warped and was not drawing adequate vacuum to pull fuel through the venturi’s. I will likely take it apart and see if anything obvious is visible. I’ll post pics, if anything interesting.
 
super interesting, looking forward to the follow up. Was it a Stromberg, Holley, Carter or something else?
 
Holley 2210 2bbl

Once warm it would only run at high rpm. If at a stop light I had to put the car in neutral and Rev engine. Once at highway speed it had a rough miss, you could hear and feel it.
 
Lean at idle and cruise.
 
The warped air horn on the Holley 2210s will not cause any rough running, from my experience on with the Stromberg WWC3 carb on our '66 Newport 383, just poor fuel economy (as the power valve is open all of the time, which affects cruise/main system economy only) and some very rich running during cold weather warm-up as when the choke valve was closed at certain angles, it would pull fuel from the float bowl into the venturi area.

On the Holley 2210, when the air horn warped, it would cause the choke valve to hang against an air horn casting, putting a little shiny spot on the casting. Which meant it could cause the choke to hang partially open, plus the similar poor cruise/main system fuel economy issues, too, as the vac passage to the power valve has a very similar track in the castings.

When you "kit" the carb, pay special attention to the various fuel bleeds in the air horn and the venturi cluster. Plus the idle feed tubes which hang down from the venturi cluster. The MIGHT look good and flow spray carb cleaner through them, but CAN (as mine were in a Carter BBD 2bbl that is on my '80 Newport from the factory) have accumulated hard deposits which clog the passages and throw-off the calibrations. Once I figured that out, I mechanically removed them with a small twist drill until I "got brass" coming out of the tubes. Reverse flushed with spray carb cleaner and that problem was gone. A normal carb cleaner soak would not have removed them. Deposits from the fuels used in the earlier-to-middle 1980s, in that case. Remember "Fina with Plash?" Lots of carbs were trashed due to hard deposits from the fuel, by observation.

In the case of the BBD, when the car would warm up it ran fine and ran fine at highway speeds, when it was on the main system. But once the choke came off, it would die, no matter what. No idle adjustments would change that. When driving at 60mph, I could take my foot off of the accel pedal to slow for an off-ramp or slower traffic, and the engine would die right then. I could usually put it in "N" and restart, though.

Finally, after noticing the "Low Speed Jet" spec in some Chrysler carb specs, I found it. At the bottom of the solid tube hanging from the bottom of the venturi cluster. I got a bent-wire spark plug wire gauge and probed one hole. It had initial resistance, which "fell through". Same thing with the next size up wire size, until it had opened to about .030". Then I went to a hobby shop and found a set of an assortment of twist drills, with a holding mechanism for them. I went progressively bigger until I "got brass" on the shavings, then knew the deposits were gone. Reverse-flushed the tubes from the top-side and all was fixed. No more performance complaints and good sensitivity on the idle adjustments.

Just my experiences,
CBODY67
 
Last edited:
Just wanted to post about a stall out problem I’d been having on a 73 Monaco 400 v8 2bbl (rebuilt from Autoline). Car would start fine and run for about 5 minutes, but as soon as it was warmed up, it would stall out.

I swapped out the carb with a $50 eBay replacement carb today, and amazingly it fixed the problem. Got rid of flat spot under acceleration also, and it idles great now. I suspect either there is dirt in the old Autoline carb or, as one member has suggested, the air horn is warped and was not drawing adequate vacuum to pull fuel through the venturi’s. I will likely take it apart and see if anything obvious is visible. I’ll post pics, if anything interesting.
Congratulations on finding and fixing the problem!!

I had an earlier Holley 2 barrel I think it was 1800 series from 1959. It had an idle air bleed passage that ran from the bottom of the carburetor to the top of the air born. I rebuilt the carburetor 2 times, thinking that I had checked every passage with blown air. Somehow I missed that one passage and had to rebuild the carburetor again because it was running heavily rich at idle. Richness at idle was causing me to fail New Jersey inspection. The 3rd time that I rebuilt the carburetor, I shoved a piece of coathanger up this passage and all kinds of dried carbon crystals came out the other end. After that, my 1959 Ford F250 passed inspection. Reiterate what Willis @CBODY67 said on checking all of the Autoline carb's passages to make sure they're clear.
 
I have written about this issue often and I even worked in the fuel systems lab at Chrysler starting in 1969 back in Highland Park Michigan Engineering Division. All I can say is that I have written about this issue at least 10 times on this site and it seems it just keeps coming up over and over.

I will just say that the issue causes rough idle if you can get it to idle at all and stumbles or pass-outs when trying to accelerate away from a stop. There was a "bridge kit" put out by the corporation to keep the airhorns from warping when overtightening the wing nut holding down the air cleaner. The rod for the wing nut in most carburetors extends down to the base of the carburetor where the baseplate is usually very strong and will not warp due to its thickness. In the Holley 2210 the rod was attached only to the airhorn that was not strong enough to not warp when the wing nut was over tightened and over repeated cold/hot cycles.

If you think the problem can be fixed with a new carb kit, you are just wrong.

The original carburetor on Scott's car was rebuilt by RD Autoline some 4 years ago and over time and probably overtightening, the problem came back.
 
I have written about this issue often and I even worked in the fuel systems lab at Chrysler starting in 1969 back in Highland Park Michigan Engineering Division. All I can say is that I have written about this issue at least 10 times on this site and it seems it just keeps coming up over and over.

I will just say that the issue causes rough idle if you can get it to idle at all and stumbles or pass-outs when trying to accelerate away from a stop. There was a "bridge kit" put out by the corporation to keep the airhorns from warping when overtightening the wing nut holding down the air cleaner. The rod for the wing nut in most carburetors extends down to the base of the carburetor where the baseplate is usually very strong and will not warp due to its thickness. In the Holley 2210 the rod was attached only to the airhorn that was not strong enough to not warp when the wing nut was over tightened and over repeated cold/hot cycles.

If you think the problem can be fixed with a new carb kit, you are just wrong.

The original carburetor on Scott's car was rebuilt by RD Autoline some 4 years ago and over time and probably overtightening, the problem came back.
Thanks! I was thinking that during the rebuild of the Autoline carburetor, a straight edge would be put on the airhorn to see if it was actually warped. Until we're sure that is the problem, it seems to me we can't be sure whether the carburetor can be rebuilt.

Am I missing something?
 
Congratulations on finding and fixing the problem!!

I had an earlier Holley 2 barrel I think it was 1800 series from 1959. It had an idle air bleed passage that ran from the bottom of the carburetor to the top of the air born. I rebuilt the carburetor 2 times, thinking that I had checked every passage with blown air. Somehow I missed that one passage and had to rebuild the carburetor again because it was running heavily rich at idle. Richness at idle was causing me to fail New Jersey inspection. The 3rd time that I rebuilt the carburetor, I shoved a piece of coathanger up this passage and all kinds of dried carbon crystals came out the other end. After that, my 1959 Ford F250 passed inspection. Reiterate what Willis @CBODY67 said on checking all of the Autoline carb's passages to make sure they're clear.
Scott did not really find the problem, he just put another carburetor on his Monaco wagon, a used 2210 he bought on line and it ran well again. The problem described above was germane to the 2210 and not the 1800.
 
Thanks! I was thinking that during the rebuild of the Autoline carburetor, a straight edge would be put on the airhorn to see if it was actually warped. Until we're sure that is the problem, it seems to me we can't be sure whether the carburetor can be rebuilt.

Am I missing something?

RD Autoline has a lot of employee turnover from what I gleaned from talking with their tech representative many times. The 2210 carburetor problem is well known to their chief tech guy but many of the new techs often miss flatening the air horn during "rebuilding" and that is why when I send mine to them to be fixed, I include a note with the carburetor to be sure the air horn is made flat again or they may well miss it and have in a couple of cases. When rebuilt correctly they run as designed.

The reality is that the 2210 is a good running carburetor when it is serviced right and the wing nut issue is not forgotten. I have that carburetor on 2 of my vehicles and they run very well when rebuilt correctly.
 
Last edited:
The warped air horn on the Holley 2210s will not cause any rough running, from my experience on with the Stromberg WWC3 carb on our '66 Newport 383, just poor fuel economy (as the power valve is open all of the time, which affects cruise/main system economy only) and some very rich running during cold weather warm-up as when the choke valve was closed at certain angles, it would pull fuel from the float bowl into the venturi area.

On the Holley 2210, when the air horn warped, it would cause the choke valve to hang against an air horn casting, putting a little shiny spot on the casting. Which meant it could cause the choke to hang partially open, plus the similar poor cruise/main system fuel economy issues, too, as the vac passage to the power valve has a very similar track in the castings.

When you "kit" the carb, pay special attention to the various fuel bleeds in the air horn and the venturi cluster. Plus the idle feed tubes which hang down from the venturi cluster. The MIGHT look good and flow spray carb cleaner through them, but CAN (as mine were in a Carter BBD 2bbl that is on my '80 Newport from the factory) have accumulated hard deposits which clog the passages and throw-off the calibrations. Once I figured that out, I mechanically removed them with a small twist drill until I "got brass" coming out of the tubes. Reverse flushed with spray carb cleaner and that problem was gone. A normal carb cleaner soak would not have removed them. Deposits from the fuels used in the earlier-to-middle 1980s, in that case. Remember "Fina with Plash?" Lots of carbs were trashed due to hard deposits from the fuel, by observation.

In the case of the BBD, when the car would warm up it ran fine and ran fine at highway speeds, when it was on the main system. But once the choke came off, it would die, no matter what. No idle adjustments would change that. When driving at 60mph, I could take my foot off of the accel pedal to slow for an off-ramp or slower traffic, and the engine would die right then. I could usually put it in "N" and restart, though.

Finally, after noticing the "Low Speed Jet" spec in some Chrysler carb specs, I found it. At the bottom of the solid tube hanging from the bottom of the venturi cluster. I got a bent-wire spark plug wire gauge and probed one hole. It had initial resistance, which "fell through". Same thing with the next size up wire size, until it had opened to about .030". Then I went to a hobby shop and found a set of an assortment of twist drills, with a holding mechanism for them. I went progressively bigger until I "got brass" on the shavings, then knew the deposits were gone. Reverse-flushed the tubes from the top-side and all was fixed. No more performance complaints and good sensitivity on the idle adjustments.

Just my experiences,
CBODY67
As I said, "Just my experiences".

After the first carb rebuild on the '66 Newport, done by the local and trusted dealership, there were no other drivability issues, other than 10 mpg, no matter what, highway, town, or whatever. When I asked the dealership service manager about that, he told me about the warped air horn issue on those carburetors and how he had taken a piece of plate glass to use as a guide to file the air horn flat again. So I formulated a plan to make a spacer gasket to compensate for the "warp". Which I did, which worked reasonably well for a good while.

Then I did it again when the sealer between the two air horn gaskets failed. That was during summer school in college. And, it would be rich enough to fog mosquitoes during certain segments of the warm-up period, when the choke was in use, which required the use of the accel pedal to keep it running until it got hot enough for the choke to open more. This was on the Stromberg WWC3 carb.

I never did check for the degree or amount of warpage, just knew that when I looked at the air horn gasket I took out, from the dealership rebuild, that it had no normal indentions in the middle of the gasket between the float bowl and the venturi area.

The Holley 2210 ended up having a similar issue, for the same reason . . . except that Chrysler had a "Fix Kit" for it and a TSB introducing it. I installed one on our '72 Newport 400 2bbl and one on the '70-spec 2210 I had put on the '66 Newport. Neither of which really needed them, but I did it anyway.

Again, just my experiences, NOT to over-ride what experiences or orientations which @saforwardlook (or anyone else) might have in this area OR to challenge his personal knowledge in this area, period.

Respectfully,
CBODY67
 
As I said, "Just my experiences".

After the first carb rebuild on the '66 Newport, done by the local and trusted dealership, there were no other drivability issues, other than 10 mpg, no matter what, highway, town, or whatever. When I asked the dealership service manager about that, he told me about the warped air horn issue on those carburetors and how he had taken a piece of plate glass to use as a guide to file the air horn flat again. So I formulated a plan to make a spacer gasket to compensate for the "warp". Which I did, which worked reasonably well for a good while.

Then I did it again when the sealer between the two air horn gaskets failed. That was during summer school in college. And, it would be rich enough to fog mosquitoes during certain segments of the warm-up period, when the choke was in use, which required the use of the accel pedal to keep it running until it got hot enough for the choke to open more. This was on the Stromberg WWC3 carb.

I never did check for the degree or amount of warpage, just knew that when I looked at the air horn gasket I took out, from the dealership rebuild, that it had no normal indentions in the middle of the gasket between the float bowl and the venturi area.

The Holley 2210 ended up having a similar issue, for the same reason . . . except that Chrysler had a "Fix Kit" for it and a TSB introducing it. I installed one on our '72 Newport 400 2bbl and one on the '70-spec 2210 I had put on the '66 Newport. Neither of which really needed them, but I did it anyway.

Again, just my experiences, NOT to over-ride what experiences or orientations which @saforwardlook (or anyone else) might have in this area OR to challenge his personal knowledge in this area, period.

Respectfully,
CBODY67
As I said, "Just my experiences".

After the first carb rebuild on the '66 Newport, done by the local and trusted dealership, there were no other drivability issues, other than 10 mpg, no matter what, highway, town, or whatever. When I asked the dealership service manager about that, he told me about the warped air horn issue on those carburetors and how he had taken a piece of plate glass to use as a guide to file the air horn flat again. So I formulated a plan to make a spacer gasket to compensate for the "warp". Which I did, which worked reasonably well for a good while.

Then I did it again when the sealer between the two air horn gaskets failed. That was during summer school in college. And, it would be rich enough to fog mosquitoes during certain segments of the warm-up period, when the choke was in use, which required the use of the accel pedal to keep it running until it got hot enough for the choke to open more. This was on the Stromberg WWC3 carb.

I never did check for the degree or amount of warpage, just knew that when I looked at the air horn gasket I took out, from the dealership rebuild, that it had no normal indentions in the middle of the gasket between the float bowl and the venturi area.

The Holley 2210 ended up having a similar issue, for the same reason . . . except that Chrysler had a "Fix Kit" for it and a TSB introducing it. I installed one on our '72 Newport 400 2bbl and one on the '70-spec 2210 I had put on the '66 Newport. Neither of which really needed them, but I did it anyway.

Again, just my experiences, NOT to over-ride what experiences or orientations which @saforwardlook (or anyone else) might have in this area OR to challenge his personal knowledge in this area, period.

Respectfully,
CBODY67

I responded as I did because you indicated based on your experience with the Stromberg carburetor that the Holley with a warped airhorn would not result in any driveability issues. That to me is a stretch to say that if they are not the same carburetors and the Holley's definitely do result in some very serious driveability issues. That statement might lead one to think he has another problem with his Holley 2210, that was all. I really wish we at least had a choice of red vs blue "disagree" symbols to respond with. But I am aware the red heats up more emotions so it is good for site participation but I personally don't like creating over the top emotions. So please see it as just a disagreement and nothing more......................
 
Last edited:
Steve I should send this to you and you can do an autopsy with photos for record!

I actually thought about taking it apart and using a light coat of blue printers ink and setting it on top of a piece of glass to see if you could see the surface warpage looking up on the glass.
 
Steve I should send this to you and you can do an autopsy with photos for record!

I actually thought about taking it apart and using a light coat of blue printers ink and setting it on top of a piece of glass to see if you could see the surface warpage looking up on the glass.

Naw, Scott, I have plenty to do already so just let RD Autoline do that for you. At my age, I still have some full restorations I need to do yet!
 
As I said, "Just my experiences".

After the first carb rebuild on the '66 Newport, done by the local and trusted dealership, there were no other drivability issues, other than 10 mpg, no matter what, highway, town, or whatever. When I asked the dealership service manager about that, he told me about the warped air horn issue on those carburetors and how he had taken a piece of plate glass to use as a guide to file the air horn flat again. So I formulated a plan to make a spacer gasket to compensate for the "warp". Which I did, which worked reasonably well for a good while.

Then I did it again when the sealer between the two air horn gaskets failed. That was during summer school in college. And, it would be rich enough to fog mosquitoes during certain segments of the warm-up period, when the choke was in use, which required the use of the accel pedal to keep it running until it got hot enough for the choke to open more. This was on the Stromberg WWC3 carb.

I never did check for the degree or amount of warpage, just knew that when I looked at the air horn gasket I took out, from the dealership rebuild, that it had no normal indentions in the middle of the gasket between the float bowl and the venturi area.

The Holley 2210 ended up having a similar issue, for the same reason . . . except that Chrysler had a "Fix Kit" for it and a TSB introducing it. I installed one on our '72 Newport 400 2bbl and one on the '70-spec 2210 I had put on the '66 Newport. Neither of which really needed them, but I did it anyway.

Again, just my experiences, NOT to over-ride what experiences or orientations which @saforwardlook (or anyone else) might have in this area OR to challenge his personal knowledge in this area, period.

Respectfully,
CBODY67

I really wish we at least had a choice of red vs blue "disagree" symbols to respond with. But I am aware the red heats up more emotions so it is good for site participation but I personally don't like creating over the top emotions. So please see it as just a "blue" disagreement and nothing more as I know your personality from many interactions and I do appreciate your careful words and willingness to help. Take care......................
 
Holley 2210 2bbl

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 4.14.34 PM.png

I can fix everything that's annoying about this carburator with one well aimed blow ;[]
 
Well so far it’s still working. I may get to a point where I crack open the other carb, but I haven’t yet.
 
I actively retrofitted a 60's Carter 2BBL anytime I got near the Holley Mr. Coffee percolator carb, it's an unsafe carburator, and the TQ isn't far behind. If I need a big carb, Carter AFB/Edelbrock or Carter AVS.
 
Back
Top