Old School Carburetor Freak Show

Check this out. This thing is old, and this thing is weird. A Kendig carburetor, ancestor of, and even simpler than, the Predator carb. Good friend of mine found this tucked away in his shop.

As you can see, it's a very basic design. One massive square-bore barrel. Throttle linkage, fuel inlet, and one, maybe two adjustment screws. That's it. Air cleaner optional, you screw on a flange for that.

The linkage opens the simple butterfly at the bottom, and engine vacuum sucks open the spring-loaded flaps at the top. The resulting vacuum inside the barrel draws fuel through the triangle-shaped spraybar you see in the middle. Pure simplicity! In theory, this should work well on any size engine. We intend to find out.

It looks functional as it is, but we're going to clean it up, put a shine on it and start looking for a carb kit. (We don't dare open it up yet without a carb kit in hand, unless we're stuck making our own gaskets.)

We're dying to slap this thing on an engine and see how it behaves! Being that I already have a big hole in my hood, it looks like my Maverick will be the first test mule!

 

More pics...

 

Google it.

That carburetor dates way back the the 1970's. Supposed to be a high mileage maker.

Neat find.

 

whoa, I like its design! Very simplistic and looks to be something that car makers wanted to stay hidden. Tell us everything when you get it installed on an engine.

 

Isaac may be onto something.... everyone has heard the story of the special carb that will make your car get 100mpg. the oil companies buried it, but you found it.:16suspect

 

i've heard that legend too. but it was from a dude who allegedly had a ranger that gets 40mpg and yet is completely stock, and is tuned to be twice as powerful as a v-8. and with twice the torque. needless to say i didn't really listen to him all i know is he planned to find the blueprints for it and make his own. that is a neat lookin carb. looks kinda like a napkin dispenser from a 50's diner.

 

I have found a few interesting things about this carburetor. It seems to have been the subject of some conspiracy theories and had a hand in the early days of the "200 mpg carb" type myths. I don't believe that crap - I just think it's a really awesome old carb. I don't expect impossible mileage gains when I install this, but I will test a few tanks of gas through it for a couple of weeks if my friend is game for that, measure its mileage, and compare it to my baseline readings taken with my Edelbrock/AFB 600. It would be impractical to do any dyno testing at this point, but I drive my car every day and I know how my engine performs. (And maybe this will be a good excuse to finally take my car down to Memphis Motorsports Park and get some 1/4 mile times!)

Here's some of the stuff I've found about the Kendig carb:

It's mentioned in books like "Suppressed Inventions" and "Secret of the 200mpg Carburetor." It makes me wonder if things like that discredited the Kendig carb as something that belongs under the domain of crackpots like the modern-day "HHO generator" crowd.

Patent text...

 

hehe, it will be an interesting build. keep an eye on it though at first to make sure it isnt running your car too lean or flooding cylinders. despite the popular reasons usually stated, there may be a more practical reason why the design did not take off. Keep us posted

 

Better delete this thread before the man finds out and sends one of those stealth helicopters to your house... :16suspect

 

More pics...

The plate on the linkage side didn't have a gasket, just a cover. So we felt like opening it would be ok. Here's what we saw. The pics should be self explanatory; the upper "venturi plates" open mechanically under WOT, and are further opened by airflow. Anyway, those plates are tied to the gear in the center, which appears to regulate the spraybar to meter the air/fuel ratio.

 

100 mpg is ridiculous, but maybe a little efficiency increase can be expected from this carb.

 

Very good point, and I will. I think the design did continue and is now what we call a Predator carb. But as you can see there are some significant differences.

 

Whatever comes of testing this, whether it works well or not, it's a joy to look at this thing. It's just so clever in its simplicity.

 

Did you have to put it that way. I was in high school and college in the 70's. Now I feel ancient.

 

Ford ran variable venturi carbs in the early 80's on alot of their cars too, I have thrown more of those peices of garbage away than anyone should have to admit.(of course one of their biggest downfalls was all of the emissions stuff they had to put on those motors)