Building a 140 4-carburetor Linkage Assembly

I’ve been in negotiations with a gentleman in Pennsylvania to trade Betty for a good, running engine to install in Ringo. As of this morning, it appears this deal will happen. While losing Betty is a blow to my dream of having a LM daily-driver track car, it is the most realistic thing to do given the current state of my TTT (see sidebar) as well as the new set of priorities I’ve recently settled on (more on that later). The upsides are I’ll get an engine that can go into Ringo with a minimum of cash outlay (probably just seals and gaskets) and I’ll free up more space in the driveway to better deal with the fleet.

So what does this have to do with the linkage mentioned in the title, and what about my new set of priorities? Priorities first. With the “temptation” of Betty gone, once Ringo's re-roadification is complete, I’ll be focusing my time and funds on some Lucy projects. Those include rust repair, swapping in the quick-steer arms I bought from Jonathan, rebuilding and installing the ’64 rear suspension I got out of the rusty 4-door, and installing a 4-carb setup.

It’s that last project that brings me to the crux of this posting. Ever since I got the 140 HP heads and exhaust manifolds, I’ve been searching for the missing pieces still required to complete the install. Those include an air cleaner x-pipe (plenum) and a 4-carb linkage assembly. The last time I was at the Corvair Ranch, Jeff agreed to sell me an x-pipe and then he loaned me a linkage setup from a ’65 4-carb engine that I can use to build my own 4-carb linkage assembly. The other night I took a close look at both this setup and the 2-carb one to see how difficult it would be to adapt the latter to work for four carbs.
I found, fortunately, that the 2-carb linkage provides an excellent basis for the 4-carb. In fact, it appears all the 2-carb parts can be used as-is. There will be new parts required, and they are:

The rods shown in the following photo and the actuator piece they attach to.

And this slotted plate (sorry for the blurry photo).

I’ve got some 2-carburetor linkages on the shelf that will provide parts, and I’m enlisting the help of Ariel’s boyfriend in making the new parts. I’ll post on this again when some headway is made.

There are more photos of this setup here.