Today I started the Saab on gasoline. It actually started up almost right away. New fuel pump, hoses, filter, new carb gaskets and blew all the passages out. New oil, new oil filter. Ran a hose from the pump to a 1 gallon plastic gas can. I haven’t pulled the fuel tank yet so don’t place any trust in it.
The bad news is the auto-choke on the carb doesn’t work properly. I adjusted it to all the settings to open as quickly as possible, but even on a not very cold day like today, it pretty much just closes entirely. So that’s what the screwdriver is jammed into the carb for, to keep the choke open. I think I’m going to just wire it open. It didn’t really need the choke to start, and ran better without any choke at all.
After I got it warm up for a couple minutes, it settled into a mesmerizingly slow idle. I haven’t touched the carb settings yet. I set them how the rebuild sheet told me to set them when I cleaned out the carb. Obviously, it will need to idle faster than this when I go to drive it. But it sounds pretty cool ticking over at what sounds like maybe 400 or so rpm.
That’s amazing isn’t it? It’s probably got to have decent compression to maintain an idle like that.