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Not trying to be flippant, just practical. Of the approx. 1 bajillion things that could be wrong with that engine, a couple that come to mind are a stuck needle valve and/or incorrect float level, either of which would cause the carb to fill up with too much gas. The reason you need a manual is that the specs and checkpoints differ from carb to carb -- so while people on this board could tell you how to set up the carbs used on various two-stroke and V4 Saabs, you need the info for YOUR carb.
For a brief explanation of all this float/needle valve stuff, I borrow analogy from the great '70s book 'Auto Repair for Dummies,' by Deanna Sklar (who, incidentally, predated all these black-and-yellow 'Dummies' books; hope she's getting royalties!) To understand what's happening in this subsystem of your carburetor, you need look no farther than the back of an old-fashioned toilet... the kind with a tank on the back. Lift the top off this tank and you'll see that, yuck, it's really grody in there because of the minerals in your water. But you'll also see an egg-shaped thing on an arm -- this is the float. Flush the toilet and you'll see that as the tank empties, the float goes down; when it gets down far enough, a linkage on the arm opens a valve that lets water in to start filling up the tank again. When the water level gets high enough to lift up the float, this linkage shuts off the valve so the tank doesn't overfill.
Basically exactly the same kind of thing is in a carburetor. Instead of the toilet tank, there's a 'float bowl,' and inside this bowl is a float on a little arm. The arm presses against a 'needle valve,' which does the same thing as the water valve in the toilet -- when the gas level is too low, the float drops down, the needle valve opens, and gas fills up the bowl until the float rises and the needle valve shuts off.
The gas in the float bowl is the sole source of fuel for your engine, and all the rest of the stuff in the carburetor is devoted to nothing more than the task of sucking the right amount of gas out of this bowl. Of course, all the bowl and float stuff is a lot smaller than the versions in a toilet, so it has to be adjusted much more precisely or the engine will run like, well, like a toilet. So you can see how important it is to have the correct info for your specific model of carb.
Good luck! Now back to Saabs...
posted by 68.13.13...
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