Hi guys,

I'm looking for a stock replacement carb for my stock datsun. the nissan champ1400 uses the same hitachi carb, or looking to put a weber dgv 32/36 with adapter plate.

Does anyone know where I can get this carb from in South Africa or if it can be shipped to Zim?

I know a guy who just got a carb with intake pipe & cone filter for his VW van in SA & he told me it cost around R600 for the whole setup! thats about US$60. in zim, the guys wana charge that much for a second hand hitachi carb!

And what was that, something like ZIM$30 billion, damn buddy you guys must be pulling your hair out of your heads over there... Anyway, they should be fairly easy to find, if you contact Commercial Auto Parts in Johannesburg, they sell brand new ones for I think half that, and they'd probably ship it to you too... Have a look over at this link, their number is on there... Commercial Auto Parts

Give them a call, they should be able to help you out. Otherwise, phone these guys, I bought all my second hands spares from them when I restored my car...

A1 Bakkie Spares
204 Van Der Hoff Road, Pretoria North, Hercules
Tel: 012 379 7563
Fax: 012 379 2355

O ja, and by some strange coincidence my car also originally came from Zim. The owners even used it to move their stuff to ZA, but that was many, many years ago...

> Commercial Auto Parts in Johannesburg, they sell brand new ones for I think half that

Half of $60 USD? A new 1200 here from Nissan is about $350 USD. Rebuilt ones are $245.

The 1400 uses a different carburetor than the 1200. Is the bolt pattern the same? I know the last 1200s from Japan (1994) used a very different manifold and I suspect that carburetor won't work on pre-1989 engines. However, the SA carburetor is different... so who knows?

Last time I checked it was something like R350 for a brand new Hitachi carb, which makes it R350/9.65=$36.27, ok, not half, but close... I'll check if I can get a pic and the add I saw and post it up here.

Also The very latest A14 carbs could be bolted onto the earliest A12 manifold for a Hitachi you can find here in ZA, so it's possible that they made the manifolds the same. I was never aware that there were different carbs for them, they all looked the same to me. My dad and his neighbour used to interchange parts between their A14 and A12 carbs regularly too. Same jets , floats, needle 'n seat, gaskets everything...

Well, I had another go at my carb about 2 days ago & found that the slow idle jet was blocked! The high idling was my main issue & I sorted that out. Apart from being generally worn, it gives me about 10km to a litre (maybe with more tuning i'll get better? but i dont wanna mess with jets now)

I think my next port of call is the dizzy... I wanna change it from points to electronic. Commercial Auto Parts have the things I need? A conversion kit here will cost me US$100 (at todays rate that would be Z$200 billion dollars - get your head around that one! - & you can only draw 10 billion dollars PER MONTH from the bank). Everything is priced in US dollars anyway...

Thanks for the tip about C.A.P. I'll try email em & see if I can get some stuff!