Q:     I am the original owner of a ‘73 B-GT. Some yeas ago my son fitted a pair of 45DCOE’s and some other modifications and drove the car during his last year of high school. The car has been parked in a garage for about 20 years and is now my retirement project.

I find that the Weber manifold sits hard against the original exhaust manifold. I don’t that is a good idea. My question is - should I rebuild the old SU’s or try to find manifold(s) that provide a better fit?

If you recommend the Webers do you have any suggestions. I should note that the car is not being brought back as a show car but a daily driver play car to go hunting rice burners.

Thank you for your time and interest.

Bill Paul

A:     Good to hear another abandoned project is getting put back on the road. After 20 years, I'm sure you have your work cut out for you, but it should be a fun project.

Besides my B (which was abandoned in a garage after a minor traffic accident by a colleague's son for 2 years before I bought it), I'm now working on another "barn find" - an '88 RX7 convertible left top-down and uncovered for 5 years in an open garage full of feral cats. No rodent damage, but it smells like a litter box and the seats have suffered for it.

Back to your car. First some clarifications. You say it has a pair of DCOEs. The B head, unless a cross-flow coversion, has only 2 siamesed intake ports, each feeding 2 cylinders. The Weber DCOE conversions I have seen utilize a single 2-throat side-draft carb. Twin carbs of this type would require a strange manifold with twin y-pipes, each to a single port in the head.