Loriann (my lovely wife) and I have always owned older houses, so many times our “home”-work is replacing broken old parts with GUPs (good used parts). Working with house GUPs is challenging to say the least. GUPs are typically more fragile than their new equivalents, so we have to work carefully. GUPs always bring along the threat that, once installed, they won’t work properly. GUPs can’t be bought at Home Depot and are usually scarce, so acquisition involves some hunting followed by exorbitant shipping charges and a few days wait before the part’s in hand.
Alternatives to GUPs are GNPs (great new parts). GNPs are a joy to work with: robust, reliable, readily available, and always accurate. Unfortunately, GNPs are typically more expensive than GUPs. Because of this, we end up using GUPs whenever possible.
The same story exists in our old car work. While GUPs are much cheaper (many times free) and readily available (sitting on a shelf in the garage), GNPs come with a warranty, are pretty, and work right the first time. Unfortunately, most of the time my budget doesn’t allow GNPs. There are exceptions, however.
As I recently reported, I was able to obtain a pair of GNP-quality carburetors for much less than GNP pricing (thank you Wolf Enterprises). Sunday afternoon I was finally able to carve out an hour to install them on Lucy. Initially, Lucy didn’t run right, but I knew the carbs weren’t the problem, so I kept tweaking the linkages until I got a nice smooth idle at 600 rpm. Throttle response is excellent and there’s no more miss at partial throttle on the highway. What a pleasure.
Like I said. I love GNPs!
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