The Rochester Quadrajet Carburetor
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First released in 1965 the Quadrajet with its spread bore design and vacuum secondary became an instant success. The Quadrajet was the successor to the Rochester 4GC which was built from 1952 to 1967. Quadrajet had small primaries (1 3/32-inch for 750 CFM and 1 7/32 for the 800 CFM) for fuel economy while cruising and a larger secondary for a little extra power. The small primaries make the carburetor more efficient than a large two barrel carburetor. The secondary side of the Quradrajet opens according to the air flow of the engine, so the same size carburetor can be used from 231 CID  to over 400 CID. The Quadrajet has the float in the middle of the carb which made it more resistant to fuel slosh caused by cornering or steep hill climbing. 
There are a lot of people who dislike the Quadrajet because of the "bog" that occurs when the secondary's open thus named "Quadrabog".  In most cases it is the lack of proper adjustment. When adjusted properly the Quadrajet will perform just as well or better than any other carburetor. Chrysler had the Thermoquad  in the 1980's but used the Quadrajet in a lot of their engines. Carter was also contracted to build Quadrajets for GM cars from 1966 into the late 1970's. Carter's four digit part number followed by an S would mean that that carb was an aftermarket replacement.
Quadrajet had the 4MC which was a side mounted integral choke, (choke coil mounted on the side of the carb) the 4MV which had a manifold mounted choke, the 4M which was a manual choke, and a 4ME had an electric heater element in the choke coil. The 4 means a 4 barrel carburetor. The M is a later model type, early Rochesters' were G type. 4M is a Quadrajet (4 barrel) and 2M is a Dualjet (2 barrel) carburetor. The C or V stands for the type of choke's thermostatic coil. If there is an M before the 4 that is a modified Quadrajet built starting in 1975. If there is an E before the 4 that is an electronic controlled carburetor. Some parts are not interchangeable between 4M and M4M carbs.
All Qudrajets built up to 1975 had a seven digit serial number. The number up until 1968 was stamped on a round metal tag attached to the bowl. From 1968 on the number was stamped on the rear main housing on the left side.

Rochester Carburetor Casting Numbers

7042210
The prefix code 70 will appear on all Rochester carburetors up until 1976

7042210
The number 4 is the decade produced
2- 1960's
3- 1960's (California standards)
4- 1970-1975

7042210
The number 2 is the year produced
2- 1972

7042210
The next number 2 is the model
0- Monojet (single barrel) Federal standards
1- Dualjet (two barrel) Federal standards
2- Quadrajet (four barrel) Federal standards
3- Monojet (single barrel) California standards
4- Dualjet (two barrel) California standards
5- Quadrajet (four barrel) California standards
6- Varijet (two barrel) Federal standards

7042210
The number one is the division
0, 1, & 2 are all for Chevrolet
4- Buick
5- Olds
6 & 7 Pontiac

7042210
The last number indicates the transmission type
All odd numbers- Manual Transmission
All even numbers indicates Automatic Transmission
(this may not be the case all the time)

1976 and later

17082283
The prefix code 170 will appear on all Rochester carburetors 1976 and up

17082283
The number 8 is the decade produced
5- 1976- 1979
8- 1980's

17082283
The number two is the year produced
2- 1982

17082283
The next number 2 is the model
0- Monojet (single barrel) Federal standards
1- Dualjet (two barrel) Federal standards
2- Quadrajet (four barrel) Federal standards
3- Monojet (single barrel) California standards
4- Dualjet (two barrel) California standards
5- Quadrajet (four barrel) California standards
6- Varijet (two barrel) Federal standards

17082283
The number 8 is the division
0, 1, & 2 are all for Chevrolet
4- Buick
5- Olds
6 & 7 Pontiac
8- Chev, Olds, GMC, Truck

17082283
The last number 3 is the transmission type
Even numbers indicate- Automatic Transmission
Odd numbers indicate- Manual Transmission
(and again this may not always be the case)

Date code
1382
The 138 stands for the one hundred and thirty eight day of the year

1382
The 2 stands for the year- 1982

The two or three letters stamped beside the other numbers indicate the plant at which the carburetor was built.

Carter Quadrajets produced may have been carried over to the next model year. It is correct to have 1968 Olds using a Carter Carburetor produced in 1967.
It is also important to note that high end carburetors sell for a lot of money, so buyer beware as there have been reports that some people have ground off the casting numbers of cheaper carbs  and replaced them with other numbers.








Here is a video on how I rebuilt the quadrajet
Part 1                           Part 2
 
 

Leavenworth's history started with the, Chinook, Wenatchi, and Yakima tribes, where they hunted and fished. Leavenworth (original called Icicle Flats) was first settled around 1885 as a trading post, where white settlers came to trade with the Native American Tribes. The area was eventually settled by pioneers searching for furs, gold and good farm land. The original town of Leavenworth was built in 1890 on the Icicle Flats. The town began to prosper when the Great Northern Railway (GNR) came through in 1892.
The Lamb-Davis Sawmill was one of the largest in the area. A few years after the worse railway disaster in American history, (The Wellington Train Disaster of 1910) the sawmill closed down and the GNR moved their rail line from Tumwater canyon to Wenatchee. The 1930's Leavenworth saw over 20 empty storefronts along its two block district. The town of Leavenworth was almost a ghost town when town leaders and businessmen came up with a plan to transform the town appearance to a Bavarian Village. Today Leavenworth brings over a million visitors to the Village every year.

Leavenworth, Wa.
Check out this video on Leavenworth


Wellington was a small community (which housed many railway workers) at the west portal of the original Cascade Tunnel in Stevens Pass. The little town of Wellington was founded in 1893 and later the name was changed to Tye.
On February 23, 1910, two Great Northern (GN) trains, the Spokane Local passenger train No. 25 and a mail train No. 27 left the east Cascade Mountain town of Leavenworth. After a delay of heavy snow they proceeded towards Puget Sound. After passing through the Cascade tunnel they were forced to stop near Wellington due to heavy snow. Heavy snow and avalanches made it  impossible for the train crews to clear the tracks. For the next six days the trains waited in blizzard conditions as the snow kept falling. At some point they would get one foot of snow in an hour. On the 26th of February the telegraph line went down and they lost communication with the outside world. The snow drifts were up to 20 feet deep in some places. At this point some of the passengers decided to walk to the next station at Scenic and they all made it. On February 29, the weather turned to rain with thunder and lightning. In the early morning of March 1, 1910, a wall of snow over 14 feet high let loose, slamming into the trains, sweeping them 150 feet down to the Tye River gorge. In all 96 people lost their lives, it was the most deadly disaster in U.S. history, and over a century later it still is. The injured were sent to Wenatchee, the bodies of the dead were transported on toboggans to trains that carried them to Everett and Seattle. Out of the 96 people that died, 58 were railway workers sleeping on the trains, 35 passengers and 3 rail workers that were sleeping in cabins. It was July before all of the bodies were recovered.
The immediate cause of the avalanche was the rain and the thunder, but the conditions had been set by a forest fire caused by the train sparks and by the clear cutting of timber.
It took three weeks to repair all the tracks before the trains could run again. At this point the Great Northern changed the name of Wellington to Tye. By 1913 over 9 miles of snow sheds were built from Tye to Scenic to protect the trains. In 1929 a  7.8 mile tunnel was built at a lower level and is still used today by Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Three days after the Willington disaster an avalanche killed 62 men clearing a railroad line near the summit of Rogers Pass through the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia. It is Canada's worst avalanche disaster.

Ghost Town Wellington and the Train Disaster
A video on Wellington and the Train Disaster


The original 1893 line over Stevens Pass was so steep that a series of switchbacks had been built. The time it took to go over the switchbacks varied from 12 to 20 hours depending on the weather, as snow in the winter was a real problem. In 1900 Great Northern built the first cascade tunnel which by-passed the switchbacks and saved a lot of time. The tunnel was welcomed by everyone, but brought other problems. The tunnel was built at a slight grade which made good drainage but meant that the eastbound trains had to work harder creating more smoke filling the tunnel and making the passengers and crew members sick. Great Northern decided to pull the trains through the tunnel with electric locomotives.
A few miles east of the tunnel the railroad built the Dam on the Wenatchee River in Tumwater Canyon. An 8.5 foot diameter pipeline was installed to carry water 11,654 feet under pressure to a power plant. A big tank on a 100 foot tower was built near the plant to protect the facility from pressure surges. Three hydroelectric generators (2000 KW) were installed to power the new locomotives. The project was completed in 1909.
In 1927 a new system was built. The electrified zone was extended in both directions, to Skykomish and east to Wenatchee. A new main line was built through Chumstick Canyon. The old power plant was sold to the county of Chelan. The old rail bed became part of the newly built Cascade Highway. In 1987 the Tumwater Dam was converted into a fish passage way to help salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds.

Tumwater Dam


The Hope Slide was the largest landslide ever recorded in Canadian history.
Saturday morning, January 9th, 1965, a huge landslide roared down into the Nicolum Creek Valley destroying 2 miles of the Hope-Princeton Highway and killing four people. The slide brought down over 61 million cubic yards of rock, dirt and snow. It completely covered Outram Lake, went up the opposite side of the valley and then came back down. The rocks were over 200 feet thick in some areas as they settled in the valley.
Prior to the landslide a snow slide forced three people in a 1959 chevy convertible, a tanker driver, a trucker hauling hay, and a Greyhound bus to stop.
One of the truck drivers and the Greyhound bus decided to turn around and go for help. The other truck driver was sleeping in his truck. Two male passengers of the car were trying to dig the car out while the young lady was in the empty truck warming up when the landslide came down. Two of the bodies were never recovered and still remain somewhere under all that rock. It took 21 days for construction crews to clear a pathway for the highway.
On August 13, 1965 S.W.K Stevenson was killed when his aircraft crashed near the Hope Slide. On April 23, 1966, a Royal Canadian Air Force Grumman CSR-110 from the RCAF station at Comox crashed on the Hope Slide killing five of the six crew members.


According to Wikipedia two earthquakes were recorded near the area of the slide, one at 3:56 am and the second one at 6:58 am. Later research showed that the impact against the opposite valley produced seismic signals interpreted as earthquakes and that the landslide was caused by the presence  of existing faults and shear zones on Johnson Ridge.

The Hope Slide
A video on The Hope Slide


T
he Native American Indians were the first inhabitants of Winthrop. They lived along the banks of the Methow, Twisp, and Chewuch  R ivers where they hunted and fished. In the spring of 1883 the lure of gold brought the first white settlers to the area. The town was named after Theodore Winthrop, a Yale graduate, adventurer and author. In 1893 the town was rebuilt after most of the town was destroyed by fire. In 1894 a flood carried away the bridge at the north fork of the river. The bridge was rebuilt at Slate Creek by Colonel Tom Hart in 1895. Winthrop's main industry were cattle, a well equipped sawmill, several dairies, that suppled the local mines with goods. In 1915 most of the mines in the area had shut down. When the State Highway was being built over the North Cascades the people and businesses of Winthrop began planning for travelers passing through their town. They agreed on an American Old West design of all the buildings in town, making it a tourist attraction. The idea was inspired by the example of Leavenworth which in turn was based on Solvang, California. Winthrop is the home of the oldest salon in Washington State.
Winthorp, Wa.
Watch a video on Winthrop




The Museum displays local Native American artifacts and a super archeological collection from the mid-Columbia River that dated back 9,000 years. It also has natural history, local history, a mineral collection and a Pioneer Village, which contains more that 20 original structures. Most of the buildings are over 100 years old and are filled with original antiques, artifacts and furniture of the era. We enjoyed touring the museum and would highly recommend anyone that is driving through Cashmere to take in the Museum and Pioneer Village.
 
Cashmere,  Wa. Museum & Pioneer Village 
A video on The Musuem and Pioneer Village

The word "Newhalem" (in the Upper Skagit Tribe language) means "a place to snare goats".
In 1917 Seattle Light established Newhalem as a company town. Only employees of Seattle Light or agencies of the National Park Service live in the town.
J.D. Ross was a superintendent at Seattle City Light and was the one who envisioned the Skagit Hydroelectric Project.  He oversaw the building of the three dams (Ross, Diablo, and Gorge) in the area. He didn't want to build a road to the dams because there was concerns of sabotage. The only way out of this area was by rail.
Engine #6, which is still sitting beside the highway, took people and supplies from Rockport to Newhalem. In 1928 tours began to show the people what they were investing in by buying bonds to fund the project.
Old number 6 was built in 1928 for Seattle City Light by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Pennsylvania.
Construction of the Gorge Dam began in 1924. This powerhouse is part of the Skagit Hydroelectric Project and gets its water from the Gorge Dam three miles upstream.
Newhalem and the Gorge Dam
A video on Newhalem and the Gorge Dam
A video on the Tumwater Dam
Here is a video on how I built a Bike Rack
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How they crush cars
The Old Gorge Dam
Some pictures of the Train Wteck
Rock Creek Parade, Canada 150
The Awesome Duo
Our email: vandm@theawesomeduo.ca
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All Photos and text by: ©Vic Boychuk except when noted
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