The Dromedary, to be specific.
So winter's over and I got time to think about the first season plowing with my 1985 W250. Near the end it was getting a little rough freeing up a foot to goose the gas to keep it from stalling. It is a stick shift after all and I have enough going on plowing snow. Don't need it breaking down and blocking traffic on my one-lane street.
I grabbed the Holley 2280 non-computerized carb off it to see if maybe a gasket kit and some cleaning would benefit it. It was a little rusty inside and I said, nuts to this, and went shopping. The float didn't seem like it was sticking and the jets didn't look clogged but I'm not a wizard at these things so I pried the wallet open... a little.
Ebay had a "Rally" carb I considered but then Amazon came through with the "Dromedary". It is from all pictures the same stupid thing, a "Carter style". Ebay vendor claims compatibility up to 1985 while Amazon dropped off at 1980. Regardless, I don't have a smog test to pass, so I figured, whatever.
The old carb sat on a 1/2 thick fibrous gasket, and kind of imprinted its pattern onto said gasket. New carb came with two thin ones. Stuck one underneath and tweaked the choke rod coming out of the manifold to an appropriate length. The throttle lever was dangerously close to the "mushroom" part of the EGR valve so I bent it a millimeter.
Sadly, the hose barbs aren't in the same places. The big guys like PCV are in the same spots and work fine but the little guys aren't. Dodge used prebent plastic lines, and, sadly, integrated them into an electrical wiring harness, making chasing them down a chore. (I haven't yet looked for an underhood label.) There is also some sort of crazy amplifier with a bunch of hoses that runs off this thin line. I don't care if I don't have EGR etc but I do want timing advance to work right. Will have to throw a timing light on this and check to see.
So how's it run? More amazing than I've ever heard it! The idle mix screws were good from the factory but I reset them to 1.5 turns out. Truck has a very nice consistent idle and all the adjustment screws work intuitively. Choke comes off like expected. In short, it works. I'll never be able to report peak power or MPG but felt like I had to throw the existence of this thing out there...
