Passport Transport dropped off a car off at my shop last week, and it belonged to new customer. I’m actually friends with the owner, but this is the first time I’m working on his car.

It was a recent purchase, but the owner said it wasn’t running very well, and I would have to agree. She would not start off the truck, and I was afraid I was going to have tow her into my shop. Luckily after shooting some starter fluid down the carb throats, she fired up and I managed to limp her inside.

The car was really clean, and tidy under the hood, but it soon became obvious there was something wrong with the carburetors. The accelerator pumps weren’t squirting, so that was the reason for the hard start. From the looks of the car, it was pretty obvious what was happening. Sitting for an extended period of time, the fuel inside the carburetors evaporated and clogged up some of the passages inside. Side draft DCOE Weber carburetors makes access to the accelerator pump jets easily accessible, but even after checking one or two, I found the problem was even deeper.

The real solution was to pull all the carburetors off and deep clean every one. On C/4s, this can be challenging with the removal of the air cleaner assemblies, but with the carbs off, I found the accelerator pump pistons themselves seized in the bores from the old residue.

After a good bath in my ultrasonic cleaner, the parts came out nice and clean. The parts looked like they were in good shape and the gaskets were relatively fresh, but however long this car sat without use managed to foul up the internals.

The old air filters were a little beat up from being removed several times before, and putting it back the filter housing with with exposed metal mesh was risking cutting the crap out of my hands when it came time to install each velocity stack inside. How much were new filters? about $250 bucks each! Welcome to Ferrari ownership.