You should probably be following both of these Tweeters if you happen to use that hellscape site that is Twitter. Reason being? They provide great moments as shown below:
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While I’m pleased that the San José, California police department broke up a massive catalytic converter theft ring…
“The operation targeted prolific catalytic converter thieves and the illegal underground market that has fueled the crime trend. Fifteen suspects were identified and all have been arrested. Multiple search warrants were served over a period of several weeks and detectives recovered illegal weapons, over $50,000 in cash, and over one thousand catalytic converters that are believed to have been stolen from vehicles throughout the Bay Area.”
I’m even more delighted at the name of the sting operation…
“On November 16th, 2021, the San José Police Department concluded Operation Cat Scratch Thiever, a six-month long investigation into catalytic converter thefts in the City of San José.”
Cat Scratch Thiever!
The 2 barrel carburetor is officially dead, apparently.
I rebuilt the Rochester on my car recently using the Standard Hygrade kit suggested by Rock Auto. Although the kit contained several other gaskets for different variations of carburetor, none of the included flange gaskets was right for my application, and the old one delaminated when I took the carb off the car and couldn’t be reused. I looked online, and found a couple different versions that would work, even if they were not an exact match for the gasket I was replacing.
I went to two different chain stores and called a third one on the phone. In each of their computer systems, even though when they fed in the information on engine size, and then in the next dropdown box correctly entered that I have the 2 bbl version, each of their computer systems brought up a 4 bbl gasket. Most of the counter personnel couldn’t understand how I could tell from the picture that wasn’t the right part. One of the listings brought up a picture of a Holley bowl gasket as the Rochester flange gasket. Finally, at AutoZone I pulled up the FelPro part number from an online speed shop, and indeed they had it in their system.
Out of four different auto parts chains, only one had something in stock locally. I called the store before heading over there to be sure they could actually touch the gasket so I wouldn’t be wasting a trip on a phantom part. Indeed, it was there.
The part was only two bucks, so I figured I would buy a spare, just in case. Nope; they only had one in stock.
So, for a gasket that generically fit about a million different cars a few decades ago, only one of them was available from the nearest 200-ish auto parts stores. I guess out of those million or so cars, the large majority have already been turned into refrigerators and beer cans, and the majority of what’s left have been converted to 4 bbl or injected. The 2 barrel carburetor is officially dead, apparently.
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