Carburetor Problems

Well, I got my car handed down to me from my parents who absolutely refuse to tell me about the car. From what I have found on my own, the carburetor has an internal leak, which I'm assuming cannot be fixed. My car idles high, runs rich, and eats gas like there's no tomorrow. I don't know what carburetor I have, and I don't even know if the internal leak is fixable. I don't even know if it it is idling high because of the carburetor and I'm really hoping there isn't anything else wrong. When I start it up (which requires pumping the gas and holding the accelerator pedal while turning the key) it runs at about 8 rpm, and after about 5 minutes of letting it run, it ends up at about 15 rpm. I am at a loss, and my car hasn't been street legal for three years, and there could be more problems after I am able to drive it more.

year? motor? # of barrels? stock carb or aftermarket?

It's a 1978 Type LT, Chevy Small Block V8. I don't know a single thing about the carburetor.

Yeah you're gonna have to do a little sluething around to find out what ya got on there. FRom there you could look for replacements, or if you're handy enough rebuild it, which is a dying practice now that carbs are practically desposable. I was walking around a swap meet a week ago and every table had atleast 2 carbs on it.

If your car has an electirc choke which by the way you have to start it, and the idle problem you probably do, the electric choke lead is prolly not connected. You also might have the stock q-jet (quadra junk, good for fuel economy sometimes, but only if its been taken care of.) carb. Flooring the camaro q-jet sets off the manual over ride on the carb, it set the carb for full choke/extreme cold start comditions. This is fine as long as you have the electric choke lead attached cause it automaticly readjusts after the engine starts up, but if the lead is off, the choke will stay closed, and the car will idle high, (this happened to me, its fun to idle 1500) you can fix this one of two ways. when the car starts, and the idle start to go up, floor it for just a fraction of a sec, if your carb is not completely locked up, and you're lucky , it will open the choke, and bring the idle down (mine was crap, so this didn't work too well.) The other way is to manually reset the choke by hand. If your car is all origional, and has the origional breather this is a pain in the ass the first few times, but after that all you have to worry about is the fan, and the belts.(mine isn't, and doesn't)

As far as I know this works for all standard camaro q-jet carbs with electric chokes. Mines happens to be a 84.

1. Pop the hood.
Optional2. Take the breather/air filter assembly off
3. Looking at the carb. On the left side of the carb is a small cylinder with a black top(this is the electric choke), infront of it, closer towards you are two small levers that run upto, and under the electric choke, if your idle is high, they will be up, flip them down, and idle will drop to normal very quickly.

If you cant find this ill post pictures of my carb, and me doing this.

Its kinda a bad idea to remove your airfilter assembly when the car's running, so be quick or be s.o.l.

If that carb is original and never been rebuilt...it is way over due.
What to do....get several small bottles of testors model paint (different colors). Pull the air cleaner assembly. Take the paint and paint a small stripe on each vacuum hose (different color for each hose) and as you paint a hose, pull it off and paint the barb it was on the same color. This will allow you to put it back together easier. Once all of the hoses are painted, remove the carb. Once it is off, take a piece of cardboard and put over the opening in the intake manifold to keep things from falling down in there. Take the carb to NAPA and tell them you need a rebuild kit for it (they'll need the casting numbers off of it to get the right one). Also get a float if it doesn't come in the kit and get a new filter for in the carb base. Get a couple cans of carb cleaner and a toothbrush and a small acid brush. Find a nice clean place to work on it ad maybe even put down an old Tee shirt to work on so if you drop parts they won't bounce.
The rebuild kit's instructions should have an exploded view of the carb. Disassemble the carb carefully and lay out the parts like in the exploded view. Swap out the old parts with the new ones from the kit (not all parts get replaced). Clean up the carb BUT be careful to not remove the paint you put on the barbs. Reassemble the carb (you may not be using all of the parts in the kit) and set the float per the instructions. Mount the carb on the manifold with a new gasket and hook it all up. starting it up after a rebuild will take a few trys since there will be no gas in the carb at all and it'll take some cranking to refill it.