Just picked up a sweet minitruck, '87 Toyota 2WD with a bunch of LCE parts on it. Among them is a Weber 32/36 on an Offenhauser dual-plane manifold with some kinda LCE vortex carb spacer.
The thing whistles like CRAZY between very light and medium throttle. Not at idle, not under aggressive throttle. I would tend to think this is a vacuum leak (but some people say carb spacers just make that noise?) so I'm wondering what the best way to remedy it is. I bought it from an old friend who said that the sound is normal from everything he could gather, but it's driving me wild so I need to do something about it.
It has a teflon base gasket and a paper gasket between the spacer and carb. Should I use a little bit of copper gasket spray somewhere to try and get a better seal? Should I throw the spacer away (some people swear they make a huge difference, others say they're useless)?
http://www.lceperformance.com/LCE-Pro-Spiral-Spacer-1-Weber-Carb-Spacer-Kit-p/1033023.htm
Never heard of this I am curious to see what people say.
I had this on one carb (it has 4) in my Corvair once, but it was at idle and it was pretty loud. I cleaned up the butterflies on the carb (light sanding) and that stopped it.
I am thinking it was a little bur of metal on the edge of the butterflies that was having some sort of strange whistle effect.
Since yours is doing it off idle, I would suspect it might be the the seal as you suspect, but you might want to take a look at the butterflies just to be sure.
Either get rid of the muffler, or put a louder stereo in it. 
Seriously, I would take out the spacer and see what happens.
You might need the spacer to for the linkage to clear the manifold, I had an 18R with a dual plane offenhauser and I needed a spacer.
dean1484 wrote:
Never heard of this I am curious to see what people say.
Me too. The Autolite 4300 in my first car also whistled at a certain throttle position a little before the secondaries started to open.
It's not really unusual for a bit of whistling just off idle. That is a result of high air speed past the almost closed throttle. If it's still whistling at more than quarter throttle, I would be looking for leaks, either internal or external.
A bit of a whistle isn't really too odd on an old, simple carb, either. It's one of the reasons factory built air cleaners are so big.
In reply to Streetwiseguy:
Yeah, everything I'm finding suggests that unless it's whistling all the time it's very likely normal. This only happens at extremely light-medium throttle (like 1/16 to 1/4 and then it goes away) so I'm inclined to believe that, what sucks is that that's basically freeway cruising throttle input so I hear the damn thing all the time!
May just need to replace the little Weber cube air cleaner with something more substantial.
In reply to pointofdeparture:
Maybe add velocity stacks?
Mine whistles constantly, drives me nuts and I'm having trouble tracking down the source. 82 fj40 2f 38mm webber, brand new, passes a smoke test with my matco machine. I did have to fix an issue with the adapter plate where the studs stuck out the bottom just enough to cause a vacuum leak, I ground them down just a tiny but so they're subterranean.
