Carburetor Problems

On Friday I took some friends out for a drive in the truck.  After running out of fuel I went to refill and noticed that fuel was leaking from the carb onto the exhaust manifold, creating lots of smoke and a strong gasoline smell.  After filling up we jumped back in and took off.  About a minute later the truck stalled.  Opening the hood we found the "tank" empty and fuel leaking out of the carb like before.

I could see the fuel pouring into the carb with the air filter off, which was creating a flooded carb.  Tow strap put in place and I get towed back to Maverick's stable.

On Sunday I took off the carb and disassembled it, looking for the culprit.  My understanding is that the a leaking float will not shut off the fuel flow and flood the carb.  Besides just a flooded condition it also seeks anyplace to escape, which was through the throttle bushing and onto the throttle/choke assembly onto the manifold. 

I watched Mike's-Carburetor disassemble and rebuild videos on the Rochester B single barrel, to get an idea of the problem as well as to gain confidence in doing a rebuild.

Everything looks good and seems to be behaving as intended, except for the float, it leaks.  One of the pontoons was filled with fuel.  Gaskets and all other parts came out well and looked good.

I am in process of cleaning the carb and its parts and waiting for the rebuild kit with a new float.  Should be back to running on Saturday.

The Parts arrived as expected and I reassembled the carburetor without any issues.  I replaced springs, air/fuel mixture screw, float valve, and several other parts from the kit.

On Friday night we had a snow storm blow in and dump about 6 inches.  We get snow once or twice a year and mostly it dusts up to an inch then melts by 10:30 the next day.  So this storm was a bit unusual.  It also got rather cold at night, 2-3 degrees.  This is extremely cold for us and very strange.  Needless to say the snow did not melt, in fact it simply refroze and created ice conditions on many roads.  Saturday morning I bundled up and went to install the carburetor.  It was fairly simple and everything went into place as expected.  
 
The start up was longer than I hoped since the float bowl was empty, plus a cold battery.  Once it was primed the truck started up, but had to be held at a fast idle in order to stay running.  A combination of cold temp and adjustment on air/fuel valve finally gave me an idling truck.  

I took it out for a spin around the block and backed it back into its stable.  Glad to be back with the living.