Four Wheeler – September 2019

8 SEPTEMBER 2019 FOUR WHEELER fourwheeler.com

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ddress your correspondence to Four Wheeler, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245 or send

an email to [email protected]. All letters become the property of Four Wheeler, and we

reserve the right to edit them for length, accuracy, and clarity. The editorial department can also be reached

through the website at fourwheeler.com. Due to the volume of mail, electronic and otherwise, we cannot

respond to every reader, but we do read everything.

annual last-day-of-trout-season trip into Laurel

Lakes, south of Mammoth. We knew from

previous encounters with the local forest ranger

that the gate would be padlocked, usually be-

fore sundown, often without checking to see if

anyone was at the lake, and not reopened until

sometime in May. We knew we had to allow

about 30 minutes to get through the gate and

head for home. Everything was fine until the

Blazer wouldn’t start, which was a problem

because I had parked in front of my buddy’s

truck. I had recently cleaned the jets but I still

couldn’t find the source of the contamination.

I got it off, pulled the air horn off the throttle

body, cleaned it out, and we made it to the

gate just before the Ranger showed up. If it had

taken more than 20 minutes, we’d have been

stuck there.

A few years later, up on the Blueridge Park-

way in late fall, my Dad and I had stopped at an

overlook to make dinner as it started to snow.

And, once again, as we were ready to leave,

she wouldn’t start. So, there I was, rebuilding

SCOUT DECALS

A while back I followed your articles on

Project Fiery Redhead but had to write about

your editorial on your old ’77 Scout. I never un-

derstood why nobody ever went back with the

feather decals. I always thought they were one

of the best decals IH offered. I’ve seen them on

tan, white, terra cotta, and pale-yellow Scouts.

I haven’t been a subscriber to Four Wheeler for

a while, mainly because I miss my old friend

Willie’s articles. I helped him a lot with Project

Tonto. I had put a hardtop on it after three

years because the soft top had gotten ratty and

I was tired of being cold in the winter. Thanks

for the memories.

EASON LILLEY

VIA EMAIL

CARBURETOR CHRONICLES

My love/hate relationship with carburetors

began in the early ’70s, the first time I rebuilt

the Carter WCFB off my ’57 Chevy Bel Air in

my college dorm room. The four floats were

suspended from two wishbone supports, and

every time I got one float level set, the other

one had to be reset. The next encounter

was with the Rochester 4MV Quadrajet that

came off my new ’77 K5 Blazer (currently has

600,000 miles). Mileage off the showroom

floor was about 11 mpg on leaded fuel. That

gave me a range of over 1,000 miles with

the 31-gallon factory tank and 34 gallons in

the saddle tanks. Over the years every screw

thread in the throttle body and air horn had

to be replaced with helicoil. And while much

of that activity took place in a workshop, there

were a couple of times when speed and luck

were everything.

When I lived in Bishop, California, from

1981-1985, a buddy of mine and I made our

BY JERED KORFHAGE [email protected]

the Q-jet on a picnic bench in a snow storm,

in the dark, with a flashlight held in my teeth.

It was going pretty well, until the check ball

rolled off the tabletop and fell into the snow

piled under the bench. But I didn’t have a

spare and I had to find it. So, I ducked under

the table, and there it was sitting on top of the

snow pile. That was lucky. I put it back together

and drove to camp. (Later I learned from the

owner of the shop that dipped and stripped the

rust out of the steel saddle tanks that the Teflon

liner in the factory tank was deteriorating and,

while the particles were small enough to pass

through the paper filter, they’d clog the jets. I

added a Fram HP-1 inline cartridge filter.)

Also, long before hypermiling became a

thing, I proved the value of extreme carb tuning

and the Cagle regulator on a weeklong Thanks-

giving trip to Death Valley. The year before, sev-

eral groups had been stranded in Saline Valley

by a freak snowstorm, and the Air National

Guard had to airdrop food and supplies to

them. I packed heavy and left Bishop with

full tanks. At the end of the week, I was

headed home on the Saline Valley Road,

just a few miles from the paved road back

to Big Pine. There was a line of trucks

coming south, and they stopped to tell me

that there was black ice in the canyon,

and they’d had to turn around. I looked at

my fuel gauge, and I told the leader it was

already on Empty. I knew there was some

left in reserve and I could get to Big Pine,

but the nearest gas back south was Olan-

cha, and that was kinda dicey. They spot-

ted me in the middle of the convoy, ahead

of a couple of drivers with jerrycans, and

we headed for Olancha. We got there,

after dark, with no problems, and parted

ways at the gas station. It turned out that it was

70 miles from where I made the flip, and it

took 30.5 gallons to fill the 31-gallon main tank.

You’ve never really run out of gas till you’ve run

out of 65 gallons of gas.

DON MURRAY

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HUNTIN’ AND FISHIN’

Hope you’re not tired of ugly green trucks. It’s unfortunate that I got lucky and was able to pur-

chase my cousin Ben Corley’s ’76 Chevrolet Bonanza^3 ⁄ 4 -ton after his passing away. He purchased

the truck new and in-

stalled a slide-in camper

and only used it for hunt-

ing and fishing in Colora-

do. It has 90,000 original

miles. Still had the original

camper on the truck

when I purchased it.

WAYNE

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