Running Rich

gub

gub

Forum Member
If you are running rich on a carburated motor, do you lose alot of power or anything?
 
gub said:
If you are running rich on a carburated motor, do you lose alot of power or anything?
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I guess it really depends on how rich, to fat and it will lose power, to lean it will cook parts. The easy answer is to much fuel can cause a power loss.
 
Ok generally speaking most engines are not very sensistive to having to much fuel. The lower the compression ratio the more this is true. Higher compression ratio engines are more sensitive to overfueling. I imagine this is becuase it is harder to light a fuel heavy mixture with lots of cylinder pressure.

Now what will absolutely kill power is being to lean. 1 point to lean can kill output by as much as 1/3 easily. To rich though and the percentages shrink greatly.
 
gub said:
So should i just leave it?
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If you have access to a wideband A/F I would suggest playing around with it. I absolutely sucked a working on carbs. until I bought my LM1 a/f gauge. When I bought the gauge the car was running at 10.81:1 a/f after a few hours of playing with jets,air bleeds and mixtures I was able to get the carb at 12.2:1 until it got above 6700 rpms and then it went back to 10.50. Had I had more time at the dyno I think I could have gotten more out of it.

You could always play around with it and read your plugs to see what makes a difference. Only make one change at a time, it will make changes easier to decipher. If your not fouling plugs out you should be okay.
 
Don;t forget to look at the plugs. They will tell a nice story if you listen to what they have to say. Good to combine plug readings and Wideband O2 readings.
 
But dont carbs just have needles to tune A/F mixture? Do i really need gauge to tune it in?
 
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