Some months ago, the un-club held a Volvo social at Teague Oviatt's house which came to be known as the "More Worthless Carburetors Than You Can Shake A Stick At 1999" event. A Volvo specialist in Seattle was relocating, and there were boxes of used parts that he'd rather give away than move -- a potential treasure trove for the likes of us. Cameron, Teague and Shayne Green made the 200-mile trek one night, and the booty was stored at Teague's place.

Of particular interest to me were three large boxes full of old carburetors.

Now, I've been known to say uncharitable things (and think even worse) about those peculiar British artifacts produced by the Skinner-Union company, commonly known as "SU carbs." When discussing the relative merits of upgrading vs. sticking to original equipment, I have used SU carbs to illustrate the difference between the terms "vintage" and "junk." I was not alone in my opinion -- some people have a love/hate relationship with SUs; more have a hate/hate relationship -- which is why the Weber downdraft two-barrel conversion is so popular.

In the last year, though, several things have made me relent. First, I've been driving around an old 1800 which has SUs. Even though that pair is somewhat worn, they've given absolutely zero trouble. I haven't had to pull off to the side of the road and hit the fuel bowls with a rock once (which is the usual technique for making an SU-equipped car resume running on all cylinders when it ain't).

Second, we clocked Boris Kort-Packard's modified, SU-aspirated Amazon repeatedly running 0-60 at 60% of stock times. It would probably have gone quicker with four barrels of $1000, hell-to-tune sidedrafts on it, but I'm sure it wouldn't have done nearly as well running a Weber DGV kit.

Third, I had some tuning experiments in mind for our 122S. While its Weber has given trouble-free service for years, any significant changes in engine tuning would require rejetting the carb -- that's not particularly hard to do, but it's a lot more complicated than just cranking SU jets up or down a few notches.

Fourth, it's easy to think well of just about anything that's available for free. I've got about zero budget for Volvo projects at the moment, so I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to get my hands on some no-cost stuff to tinker with. I figured that out of all those carbs, there must be enough sound parts to put together one good set, and if I didn't end up using it, someone else would.

A lot was going on at Teague's when I got there. A just-sold 140 was leaving on a tow dolly, various raised hoods had attracted clusters of gawkers, some brandishing wrenches -- nobody else seemed interested in the carburetors. I started digging through the boxes on my own.

It was immediately apparent that fully half the carbs were not SUs at all, but Zenith-Strombergs. If people have a love/hate attitude towards SUs, Zeniths are known for generating absolute fear and loathing in almost everyone (I've never owned a set myself, but I wasn't about to put this to the test personally at the moment). After sorting those out and setting them aside, what was left appeared to be a large quantity of badly corroded, British scrap aluminum art; a few bent brass needles sticking out here and there for added piquancy.

Order gradually emerged from chaos. There was one set of Hi-Fs that I would potentially have liked to play with, but one dome had a hole punched right through -- someone had substituted the pointy end of a claw hammer for the traditional roadside rock. Several sets of HS-4s went into their own pile; possibly valuable stuff for someone owning an old B16-motored Volvo. I continued until I had two complete sets of HS-6 carbs sorted out, then found a good manifold, heat shield, and enough linkage pieces to make up a complete one. All parts were heavily coated with white oxidation, the pistons were stuck in their domes and the butterflies wouldn't move. At a swap meet, I wouldn't have given five bucks for the lot.

I put the junk in a box, put the box in the 1800's trunk, indulged in an hour of socializing, gawking under hoods and brandishing a few wrenches, and then headed home. The box went into the basement and I went about my business. I figured a full complement of rebuild parts would be needed before anything usable could be made out of this bunch of scrap (if even then), and -- well, there was that minor no-budget factor cropping up again, so nothing was going to happen anytime soon.

Of course, there'd be no point in telling this story if no good had resulted in the end. Shayne was first to find a way of turning junk into treasure -- sheer alchemy, actually. Discovering a very expensive British SU rebuilder over the Internet, he somehow managed to negotiate a deal where he could turn in multiple cores on one set of fresh carbs. Enough cores, in fact, to pay for the whole process, and we had cores in abundance. It took months, but I've seen the carbs he finally got back: polished to a chrome-like finish, all moving parts plated a bright gold, the throttle shafts riding in sealed ball bearings. I've never seen a prettier set -- we'll find out how they run when mounted on his 122S wagon, currently at The Works in Eugene for one of Bob Moreno's top-notch paint jobs.

Teague, meanwhile, bought a B16-engined PV544 to use as a driver while he builds a new hotrod motor for his D-Jet injected 122S. The old HS-4s are contributing to getting the PV running.

As for me, I did eventually get back to my box of junk. After a fair amount of work with penetrating oil and assorted hand tools, I got one set far enough apart to find that it had been rebuilt before. Under all that white powder and black grime lurked rebushed bodies, new throttle shafts, new jets and new fuel valves. I never did get the pistons on that pair unstuck, but the ones on the other set freed up without scoring.

After complete disassembly and quite some time spent with WD-40, mineral spirits, carb cleaner, lacquer thinner, toothbrushes and Scotch-Brite pads, I've got a set of perfectly fine SU HS-6 carbs all set to go. They're not nearly as pretty as Shayne's, but hey, I didn't drive to Seattle and back in the middle of the night to make this all happen, either. He deserves it.

Our Amazon will make do with its Weber for a while yet, it looks like. Now that there's a B20E in the garage just waiting to be converted to run carbs instead of injection (not hard to do), my "new" SUs will end up on that motor in our 1800S. SU specialist Scott Sowell (see his ad in our Classifieds under "Parts for Sale") generously contributed a set of used-but-perfect KD needles to the cause, which should be a good match for that deep-breathing motor. The worn carbs currently in the 1800's engine compartment may eventually end up on the 122S following a rebuild.

I'm incredibly lucky to be able to pursue projects like these at a time when there's no Volvo money in the till. My most grateful thanks to the friends who have made, and continue to make this possible. I hope to be able to repay you all in kind someday.

But for the moment, I just seem to have this old Dire Straits song running through my head (I think it originally had something to do with wanting MTV):