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Well, first you need the Bentley factory manual and Muir's Idiot's guide. Check www.amazon.com. Once you have those in hand, you can see how things are supposed to be. First, I wouldn't be driving that car with the carbs sticking up into the passenger compartment, that cover is also a firewall. All it takes is a leaky hose and you're toast. Next, if you do put a cover over those carbs, they'll be sucking hot air off the engine, definitely not good for engine life. All that air ducting in the rear is there for a reason. What you need is to either restore the original FI, or get the proper carbs, intake manifold, air cleaner and such to restore the proper intake hookup. Having never done this, or converted to carbs, I don't really know what's involved except I've never seen a '71 with factory carbs in a scrapyard. Earlier ones, yes. Original parts may be hard to come by. There's a few carb kits out there that purport to fit under the TIII hatch, you might want to inquire of the group as to what seems to work best. Even then, I think they still suck air from around the engine, not from the ducts. FI parts aren't going to be cheap if you need them all, but will still giet better performance and economy from a stock engine than those carbs. D-Jetronic isn't that complicated a system. On Thu, 25 Jun 1998 14:38:30 -0500, you wrote: >Greetings to the list!! > >A quick introduction first--I'm not sure how formal/informal this list is, >but so y'all know who I am: > >I live in St. Paul, Minnesota and finished college here last year >(presently I'm just working and pursuing lots of side projects while I take >a break before plunging into graduate school). Unfortunately (in this >case), I grew up with a philosopher father and a musician mother, neither >of whom ever spent much time learning about cars--if something broke, they >just took it to the mechanic! I have inherited the hands-on gene from >somewhere, and I'm doing my best to learn about fixing cars without any >guidance from friends or family (somehow, none of my friends work on their >own cars, either). > >I recently bought a 1971 squareback. The previous owner of 6 years was a >VW mechanic, as was his father for 20 years before that. So he did a fair >amount of work on the engine--it was recently rebuilt (he didn't give me a >mileage figure--about two years ago), and has dual Weber carbs installed. >To fit the carbs in, he cut a hole in the top of the engine cover, so they >stick out into the engine. When I bought it, I didn't know enough to >realize this wasn't how it was supposed to be--the previous owner told me I >should be able to buy the "missing" engine cover piece from Rocky Mountain >for $10-20... He said he was using an upside-down glass mixing bowl until >it broke. > >Now I don't have a problem with having it stick up, cosmetically, and I'm >sure I can come up with some bowl variation or build something to cover it >well, but I wonder about the effect this hole on the engine cover has on >the cooling system? I would imagine it completely screws with the airflow! >I also am not sure if he modified the engine at all to run better with the >dual carbs--I do know he included the original single carb in the buckets >of parts he gave me with the car. I'm trying to decide if I should pull >off the dual Webers and reinstall the singles, especially since I don't >really care about performance/ pickup/speed. > >Any suggestions? > >Thanks! > >Meghan >mekennedy@stkate.edu or phishlady@geocities.com >http://www.geocities.com/~phishlady > >PS I borrowed some Squareback JPEGs from a few of your wonderful web pages >earlier (pics of the two red '71 squarebacks and one orange '71?'72?)--I >will be putting up links to the pages they came from this afternoon, and I >only intend to use these pictures until I have a chance to scan my own >in--hopefully within the next two weeks! If anyone whose picture I grabbed >has a problem with it being on my web page, please e-mail me and I will >remove it immediately! (see >http://www.geocities.com/~phishlady/square.html).