Upgrading to dual carbs question.

[Strichtarn]

Hey everyone, first time thing owner as of recently. Mine has an 1835 cc weber single carb, and from the information I've seen other's post, that the upgrade to dual is going to make the reliability of the engine way better.

Now, mechanically, I don't know much about engines, so a very newbie question.
Is it a kit I'd purchase to convert it to two carbs? Or does it require extensive work and modifications to convert that over? If so, is there a gold standard that would be recommended?

[Bashr52]

For an 1835 a set of 40 IDF or 36 DRLA's would work well if you want to go dual barrels. Kads, ICT's, or baby dells would be be a bit on the small side, but doable if you want to go single barrel.

You can buy a kit that comes with all the parts needed, but make sure you have a good fuel pressure regulator or shim your stock pump to 3.5 lbs max. I would suggest a snail type synchronizer as well.

[Strichtarn]

Perfect, I appreciate the quick response. Looks like I'll be having some research to do. Thanks again!

[74 Thing]

Go look at http://vwparts.aircooled.net/ contact John there and tell him about your engine. He can set up carbs for you with jetting and float heights and then you bolt them on and synch. Regardless you will need to become familiar with your carbs so you can tune them and trouble shoot down the road.

[Strichtarn]

I appreciate the advice. His name seems to pop up a lot in the carb threads I've seen so far, im sure I'll definitely be getting in touch with him. Thank you again for the help.

[Danwvw]

Yeah, John can set you up with Webers and do it right and it will cost a bit more than doing it yourself. Someone has to do the install though. It's actually pretty easy. The hard part with dual carbs is getting them running as they should to start with.
I have purchased dual carbs from ads here on the samba for about 1/2 the cost of new. But they all took a lot of fiddling to get working right and jetted decent! People buy the O2 sensor for the tail pipe and install a Wide-Band Air to Fuel Ratio Meter to get these carbs just right for their engine and their driving conditions. Another approach now is Fuel Injection for about twice again the cost for new dual Webers. I see a lot of Empi HPMX's showing up on VW engines that are cheap Chinese copies of IDF's. Probably the nicest carbs though are the new Webers from a Weber importer like Red-Line. The nice thing about John at Air Cooled net is he will communicate with you via e-mail about them tell you get them dialed in right. I would not buy used carbs unless you want to take them all apart and rebuild them etc yourself or you have someone to do that.
The Dellorto drla 36's are no longer made but not hard to find parts for but they are a little primitive in design in that they sometimes leak fuel into your engine and it gets into the Oil. Depends on your set-up. I put a solenoid valve on mine. The Dellorto drla 36's are equivalent in size to the Weber IDF 40's. I have run both Dellorto 36's and Weber 40's without fuel pressure regulators off of both the CB-Performance Electric Fuel Pump and the Stock VW mechanical Fuel Pumps without any problems. I did check my fuel pressures and they are 2.5 to 3 psi.
The Weber IDA's are probably the most classy of all the carbs.
Depending on your engine and its valve sizes and cam, choose the correct Carburetor Venturi Size for it. Probably 30mm or 32mm or maybe 34mm if it's a high performance engine. Jetting is different for different venturi's and a Single Carb vs Dual carbs.
My Samba Purchase used Weber IDF 40mm Carburetors:

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1960 Beetle And 1679cc DP W-100 & Dual Zeniths!