Fixing My ’85 F-150 with a $60 Amazon Carburetor

So I’m at my ’85 Bullnose driving to the auto parts store to get some auto parts for my ’82 Bronco when suddenly the truck dies. Oh, well, that’s not good. So I pull out to the side of the road, right, and get out, pop the hood, and then I smell gas. Oh, that’s not good either.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. It’s an emergency episode of Bullnose Garage because, well, hello. For those of you not familiar, this is a carburetor. Yeah, it’s a carburetor out of my ’85. So I popped the hood, got under there, smelled gas, and there was gas pooling underneath the carburetor. Okay, well, there could be a few things going on there. You know, you have a stuck float, you got some stuff that could be overflowing, but generally when you got that kind of an issue, the biggest, most likely thing is going to be a gasket. And that’s exactly what happened to me. The gasket that’s in between the carburetor and my spacer plate here, actually you can see it here. Oh yeah, you can kind of see it here. It’s in pretty rough shape, and it’s cracked right there. Yep. So, and you see there’s some piece missing in there. Yeah, so I mean that’s a pretty easy fix, right? A gasket, not a big deal. The problem is that these gaskets, this particular one here, is not for a stock carburetor for an ’85 F-150. This carburetor is actually a model 62228. It’s a Carter Weber, which is a reman of the original Y’s. And so this gasket is not the standard kind of gaskets you get from Amazon or whatever. So you got to special order it, kind of, and it’s, you know, it’s like six, seven bucks plus shipping of five dollars. You know, then you’re looking at it and there’s $10. All right. And, well, you know, you can get a rebuild kit. It’s got all that stuff kind of built in, but those are 30, 40, maybe 50 bucks depending on where you go and what kind of a kit you get.

So, you know, I thought, hey, this is a pretty good opportunity. It’s actually kind of funny because in my last episode, or one of my last episodes, I was talking about the 361 Windsor, and I said I was going to carburete the stroker build that I’m going to do. And it’s because I wanted to get my hands dirty with carburetors, and I think I said internalize how bad carburetors actually are, and you sort of learn that process. Well, I think I jinxed myself because now I’ve got this to deal with. But so rather than go out and get a rebuild kit or just get a new gasket, I took this as an opportunity to do some learning and to do a video for you guys.

So what I got was this Thunder Minko. That’s the actual brand name, Thunder Minko YF replacement carb from Amazon. This is definitely a Chinese company that is making a super cheap carburetor replacement. This thing was like literally 60 bucks shipped to my door. So, you know, I’ve heard mixed things about these, but actually most of the stuff that I’ve seen has been fairly positive. Now you’re not going to get a lot of performance out of it, but I, you know, I’m not doing that right now. All I want to do is get this truck back on the road because it’s my backup truck, right? It’s also something that I enjoy driving on the weekends. It kind of de-stresses me to drive my old truck. So I want to get that thing back up and running as soon as possible. So I went out and had this shipped within one week for 60 bucks. We’re going to toss this puppy on there and see how it works.

Before I do that, though, I’m going to do a real quick side-by-side comparison of this thing in a little bit of an unboxing next to my stock carb, or after stock, but it’s closer to stock, I guess, to see what the differences are and kind of how they look. So let’s go over to the workbench.

All right, guys, so here we are side by side with the carb that came out of the truck and the spacer plate and the new Thunder Minko. And just so you guys know, this was like the cheapest one that I could find. It really is. That’s the only reason that I got this one because it was the cheapest one that I could find that had any reviews on it. So pull this out of here, and that’s all it is. It’s just a carburetor, which is pretty well packed. Just a carburetor packed in a box with a gasket set, and that’s basically it. There’s a little, um, like a quick reference guide, like if your carburetor is not working, some things to check. But really, I mean, if you’re buying one of these, you probably ought to at least have an idea what you’re doing.

So there it is. I mean, it looks super shiny, you know? I mean, and if you look side by side, they are definitely, um, get over here so you can see, definitely comparable. You know, obviously there’s a, and this actually comes with the spacer plate already installed with a gasket and everything. You know, so the only difference is that, um, for me, this has got a manual choke, and I think it’s actually a, uh, someone added the choke to this. I’m not 100% sure because it’s got an automatic choke here too. But there is a switch inside the truck. Now, I never use it, right? And I don’t have any problems starting the truck, so I think the automatic choke works on it. The manual is just a way to sort of have a little bit finer control, and the new one doesn’t have that, and I’m not going to miss it. So it’s got the automatic, um, heat-activated choke there.

So yeah, I mean, it’s very, very similar. You can tell by looking at them that they are almost identical. There’s a few differences, you know, but for the most part, they’re very, very similar. This is probably about half as heavy as this thing. You can really tell when you’re holding them that this is much, much lighter. By the way, guys, I’m not going to be throwing this away. I will be rebuilding this later on once I sort of get my head wrapped around how carburetors work a little bit better. I just wanted to get my truck back on the road, so I didn’t want to use this as a learning experience for me on how to rebuild a carb because I don’t want to take my time and do that. I just want to get something on there that’s going to make it run. But I do plan on rebuilding this at some point, probably for the Bronco because I think the Bronco is probably going to need a rebuilt carb at some point.

So yeah, but that’s basically it, man. This is pretty simple. You know, it’s just an automatic choke, simple YF replacement. So I’m going to go through this real quick just to check a couple of things before I get it on there, and then I will pop it on and hook it up, and we’re going to see how it runs out of the box.

So I’ve already given this thing a quick once-over, checked all the screws, made sure that they’re tight. They are. Checked the gaskets, made sure they look like they’re well sealed, and they do. I haven’t taken things apart because I don’t want to cause any problems with the gaskets that are already in there. This was put together just like this when I got it. So I’ll get it on there and just run it. I mean, I, like I said, I checked all the screws and made sure everything’s tightened down well, and it is. There’s nothing loose. Checked the throttle operation and the choke operation, and everything seems to be fine. I mean, the, you know, was working fine, and the, uh, see where we at here? Yeah, the choke’s working good.

So, yeah, I mean, I think I’m just going to go ahead and toss this thing on and see how it does. Okay, so I got three gaskets in the kit. The only one that’s going to fit is this one here. It’s got the elongated holes there. That’s the only one that’s going to fit around what I’ve got, so that’s what I got to use. There we go. Took me a while to get this one here threaded. You got to be careful with these flare fittings. It felt like it was going in two or three times, but I couldn’t get it fingertight past about one and a half turns, and that usually means you got it cross-threaded. And if you cross-thread one of these, you’re in trouble. So always take your time with these when you’re putting them in and make sure that you can turn them two or three times barehanded before you start cranking on them because if you get one crossed, I mean, you got to replace the metal line, and that’s, uh, that’s no bueno.

All right, you’ll see if I can cut this down to where, and that’s a long way down before you start flying. Think I can? Oh yeah, I have it. We find out the hard way. Oh, yep, that’s close. At least now I can get on. Yeah, there we go. A little tighter than it was. The old carburetor had this vacuum inlet here capped off, as you can see right there. I’m going to go ahead and hook that back up. It goes to the charcoal canister for the EVAP system. And a lot of guys don’t bother hooking that up because it’s part of emissions, and oh my God, emissions. And I’m not going to have the emissions on my 351 when I put that in here because I’m not going to deal with all those extra systems. But for this one, all it is is a hose that goes from here to the charcoal canister, so I’m going to go ahead and hook it back up. It’s not going to hurt anything.

All right, guys, so just as a reminder, this is straight out of the box. I have made no modifications with this carburetor whatsoever. I bought it from Amazon, opened it up, showed it to you guys, and installed it. So, yeah, it’s like a $60 carburetor, so we’re going to see if it runs. That’s pretty impressive, guys. I may have to make some adjustments to the idle and a couple other things, but you see how it does once it warms up, but it’s not doing too bad.

All right, guys, I want to give you a quick look at it installed, close up, and show you a little issue that I had. So there it is, all hooked up, ready to go. And the issue that I had is actually right there. So that’s the cap for the automatic choke, and it uses hot air from the engine through that line right there to slowly open the choke as the engine warms up. So the issue with this hole, like that, now that happened when I tried to adjust the choke a little bit. You undo these three screws just a little bit. There’s still one here you can’t see, and then I turned this, and just that piece just popped right off of there. So now the problem with this is that some cold air can get inside of here on a cold day and cause the choke to stay closed longer than you want it to. But around here, that’s not really that much of an issue. I don’t really have that many cold starts, so I’m not too worried about it. What I’m actually worried more about is grime and stuff getting in here. I’m not too worried too much about the heat transfer, so what I probably will do is just put a dab of epoxy or something on here just to kind of fill that in. I don’t anticipate turning this a whole lot. I mean, this is a $60 carburetor, so it’s not like, you know, if I have a real big issue with it that, you know, it’s a lot of money out. So I won’t be turning this a whole lot. Again, down here in the southwest, this doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. So I will just put a little piece of JB Weld or a little piece of epoxy or something on there, let it dry, and then that’ll cover that up. And as long as I’m not super crazy with it, it shouldn’t drip down in there and give me any real problems, and it should be good to go.

So yeah, and that is the only real issue I had with it. Considering I’m not a carburetor guy and don’t really know what the heck I’m doing with these, I had to do a little bit of adjustment, which caused me some grief because I’ve never done that before, and it got me down to the point where I couldn’t even start the engine at one point. But I worked through it and got it set up correctly, and now it kind of purrs like a kitten. So let me put the air and stuff back on there, button her up, and we will do one final start and show you guys how it runs.

All right, there we go, all buttoned up, ready to go. Let’s just do a final test, make sure that she fires right up, and I’ll pull away and see how she runs.

All right, guys, long as I go, take two. So what happened there was that I had my choke spring was wound way too tight, so the choke was snapping closed way too aggressively. So when I would hit the throttle, the throttle linkage would move, and the choke linkage would snap closed, and yeah, that would just kill the engine. So I’ve got that taken care of, so let’s see if it starts right up this time. That’s better.

All right, guys, that’s it for today. Thunder Minko carburetor, $60 carburetor from China on Amazon, worked out of the box. A couple things to consider: one, it’s definitely not as robust as a higher-level unit, but for that kind of money, you don’t expect it to be. And it really didn’t need much adjusting out of the box. It would have run fine. I just took it upon myself to do some adjustments and mess with things until it broke so that I can learn how to fix it. I mean, that’s not why I did it, but that’s how I ended up. So, yeah, and then that minor plastic piece breaking, I mean, guys, it’s cheap. It’s going to be, but the fact that it runs probably runs better now than it did before, and I mean, it gets me on down the road, so I can’t complain. For $60, it’s about the same price as a rebuild kit, maybe a little bit more. But now I got a spare carburetor, and I’m going to rebuild that one for, you know, to get myself the experience how to do that.

Yeah, so if you’re looking for a really quick way to get you guys back on the road if you have carburetor trouble, right, just sort of in general, like regularly, you know, you may want to look into one of these, even just to have as a spare. For 60 bucks, it’s kind of not a bad idea, you know? And hey, you know, I’ll tell you what, I’m really kind of glad this happened to me because it gives me some insight, man. I know way more about carburetors now than I did even a few hours ago, messing with things and getting things working. You know, all the different screws and adjustments and tuning and stuff. And, you know, it’s nice. One of these YF carburetors or YF clone carburetors, they’re really very simple. It’s a single barrel, nothing too fancy, right? So, yeah, you know, it’s a great way to get your feet wet, get my feet wet.

So yeah, anyway, there you go, guys. I put a link in the description to where to get this thing right here if you want to go ahead and check it out, maybe, you know, do your own carburetor swap if you need to do that. So, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again so much for watching, guys, and we will see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine, tinkering away, things to shine. She’s considered divine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.