In January of 2009, myself and two friends purchased a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Landau coupe for $600. Under the hood, it had a small block 350 V8 engine with a Rochester QuadraJet carburetor. The car ran but didn’t have much power. We were too focused on doing body work to worry about the engine at first.
I decided to take a look at the rebuilding the carburetor. A quick Google search pulled up several companies that offered rebuild services by mail – you send them your carburetor and some money and they send it back, rebuilt, in several days. The cost of these services was around $400 dollars – almost as much as we paid for the whole car!
Having ruled that option out, I looked at the cost of buying a Holley or other brand of carburetor. Again, the prices were way out of my range ($280 to $400). There was only one option left: to rebuild it myself.
