It's a (Buddy?) Holley!

So, after much research, I was able to find all the info I needed right on my carburetor to decipher exactly what kind it is. It wasn't in plain sight, mind you, and thanks go out to a few people. First, one of the folks on OldIHC.org mentioned that they noticed what looked like a tag in one of the pictures I posted here yesterday. Sure enough, it was a metal tag, and some degreaser and a scrub brush resulted in this:

Shiny metal tag! Where's all the crud?

I know you can't read it in the picture, but look at the pic in the last blog entry. Quite a contrast, no? The tag reads:

PART NO.

71343-R91

HOLLEY

LIST - 502

So, mystery solved - it's a Holley carburetor. The problem remained that it doesn't look like the Holley 847-F in my manual. What to do? Well, Holley still is in business, although they are geared towards performance products, rather than stock vehicles. Either way, I contacted them about the availability of a carb rebuild kit for this model, and they were very prompt in replying that they no longer make them. They did, however, direct me to Daytona Parts and based on information on their website, I found out that more degreaser would be necessary:

Well, there you go. It is a Holley 847, but not labeled as an 847-F, rather as an 847-502. I've got an email off to Daytona Parts to get to the bottom of the mystery, but at least we're moving in the right direction.

Finally, after talking to a few folks, and looking over my spark plugs, we've come to the conclusion that the issue in trying to start Big Red last weekend was likely bad or old gas. I bought 2 gallons of fresh gas for trying to start the truck, but just added it to the tank, and whatever was already in there. Who knows how long that old gas sat in the tank, not to mention what crud might be floating around in there. The plan now is to bypass the tank completely, and try to set up an auxiliary gas tank directly feeding the fuel pump, or depending on how hard that is to get to, the carb. If that doesn't get Big Red started, well, then I'll move on to the spark plugs...