Now that the weather is warming up I decided to try and fix some of the damage done by my now-ex rebuilder. JB Weld to the rescue?!? There were two stripped holes on the carb. The plan was to find a nice long screw that fits each hole, oil them so the epoxy will not stick, clean the holes, then goop the screws in. Once the epoxy hardens the screws will hopefully come out and leave better threaded holes than I have now.
Step one was to find screws that fit the holes. I did not think this would be a problem, I have a lot of hardware stashed away. The screw that holds the choke thermostat on was easy, I had gobs of those. But I had exactly 1 screw that fit the linkage cover. But I only need one. I cleaned the holes with cotton swabs and acetone and coated the screws with WD-40.The bosses for the choke screws are small and the holes break through the inner edge. To keep the epoxy from oozing out I taped a thin strip of plastic bag around the boss.The cover screw has its own problems. It is a through hole and the throttle shaft passes under it. We don’t want any epoxy getting down there. If you look closely you can see how the threads are just ripped out of most of the hole. Time to get messy! I am using classic JB Weld. I was torn between wanting an even coat on the screw and not wanting to wipe the oil off the screw threads. I probably should have done some test runs but how hard can it be? I carefully threaded the epoxy-covered screws into the remaining threads in the holes. Then I wiped off the extra. Then I walked away for two days. I was extra careful on the cover screw hole to only get epoxy on the sides of the screw and not dripple any down the hole. Both screws broke loose but on the choke cover some of the epoxy at the top of the hole came out with the screw. But there are better threads down in there.I was probably too careful with the amount of epoxy I used in the cover hole. These threads don’t look nearly as good. But they have to be better than what was there before. And there is no sign any epoxy got inside the carb. The third issue I have is the broken choke thermostat cover. I wanted to fix this too, but I also looked for a replacement.E-bay is a wonderful thing. I searched for the Carter and Studebaker part numbers and got a hit on this NOS genuine part. It was under $20 with shipping and is perfect. But I still want to fix the broken one.Step two, clean up the mess. Using one large file and a collection of needle files I started whittling down the epoxy to shape. It actually went pretty quickly. The bakelite is a lot harder than the epoxy so i was fairly easy to avoid damaging the OG plastic.Getting close here. This picture looks a little funny because I took it through a magnifying glassAnother magnified image of the bottom edge. I quit soon after this.After cleaning, I shot a light coat of gloss black on the part. You can feel the repair with your fingers and see it if you know where to look but it should function just fine. I put it away in my parts stash and will probably never use it but I feel good about the repair. Here is the finished product. Both stripped screws seem to be holding and the new thermostat looks like, well, new. I put the carb back on the car and drove it 10 miles or so. Runs great, I think I will call this good for now.
