Carter Ball & Ball Carburetor Technical

Dashpot Type of Carter BB This picture illustrates where to find the carburetor number and also the difference between a carburetor with and without the dashpot. The dashpot type of carburetor usually was placed on vehicles with automatic transmissions.

Can the dashpot type be disconnected, or replaced by a non dashpot type? This would not be recommended, but also depends on the type of transmission. If the transmission is a semi-automatic, then the car may stall when slowing or coming to a stop; that is what the dashpot prevents. Even when the dashpot solenoid is disconnected, you would still need the presence of the kickdown switch used with Fluid Drive, Hy-Drive -- whatever -- on that particular carburetor. If the tranny is manual, then it never had a dashpot or a kickdown switch to begin with and disconnecting it should do no harm. Don't ask me why Chrysler determined that their system had to be electrical, because most dashpots used from the '50s on up were passive. Perhaps it has to do with the semi-automatic (as opposed to fully-automatic) nature of their transmissions back then.

Here is a crossover list of dashpot carburetor and which dashpot they used. Please note that this is only a list of what we now know about. Some could be missing.

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