Ask The Editors: Carb Adjustment Screw Tight Squeeze
Tight squeeze situation.
A few – these are instances where a picture is truly worth a thousand words, but assuming a standard screwdriver is simply too long to find the correct angle, head to your local hardware store and check out the specialty drivers.
Bent drivers are usually only a couple of dollars and can be priceless at getting the bit in really tight spots.
If that’s still too bulky to get to the screw, they offer (for a bit more) flex drivers. These allow you to make your own bend as needed and can truly hit some hard to reach spots. Of course, the downside there is these don’t allow for the type of torque leverage as a traditional screwdriver. Perfect, though, for turning a carb adjustment screw.
If even the flex driver is too big, the only other option left to you would be to loosen the carb from the intake manifold as if you were going to remove it entirely but keep all of the other connections (fuel line, throttle, air boot) in place. Rotate it gently outward just enough to be able to get a screwdriver on the adjustment screw and make your fine tuning turns.
If your model won’t allow for this – your absolute last resort is the dreaded blind turn method- whereby you remove the carb entirely, turn the adjustment screw, reattach, fire it up and repeat. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to this, though.
