Reply to "Fuel System Issues - Help please"

The issue is safety. If the inlet valve has even a suggestion that it has been compromised, it would be best to replace it.

You were fortunate that you saw the fuel flooding.

In my experience they would usually flood into the engine first where you won't see it.

Holley carbs are not immune to this either. You can't let the engine sit for more than a few months without the bowl gaskets and pump diaphragm drying up and shrinking.

The Holley fuel valves will stick usually open from being dry.


Autolite 4100 carbs are favored on the Ford 289 HP engines instead of the Holleys because they have no bowl gaskets. People let these engines sit for years then on a whim try to go start them.

Once you get fuel in the carb and let it sit to let the gas work as a solvent on the valve, you have a chance that the floats are still good.

Holley carbs have brass fuel floats. They often collapse from sitting in ignored engines AND the accelerator gasket/diaphragm usually dries out and cracks from having sit dry after being exposed to fuel.


This business of people POURING gas down a carb to start an engine that has not been run in a long while is really just trying to explode a fire bomb.

They may have gotten lucky a couple of times on that but eventually they will run out of luck.

For one think the backfiring from that will usually fry up the carb anyway. The rod that holds the choke flat in place will get bent from the backfire and you have to rebuild or repair the carb anyway for just that.


I have seen Holley carbs burned so bad that the boosters are distorted, melted, from the heat of the flames the engine throws in the backfires.

This is really nothing that you want to play around with in an attempt to be economical.