I stumbled over a site that had about 100,000 carb kits for briggs engines, that you look up and buy if you know the engine serial number. That has come in handy a time or two. The last carb I had apart, I implemented the holley carb trick of waxing each gasket with vaseline or chapstick before assembly.
Mixed experience with chinese carbs...the one that I bought for a husky weedeater is garbage. The one on my ancient yamaha beartracker works quite well.
After my father in law tried to scalp my truck with his tractor bucket, I located four doors from another truck, and that other truck happened to have power windows/locks/mirrors which I lacked. I obtained the cab wiring harness from said truck, untaped it and spread it out over my entire garage floor. It stretched about 30' from one end to the other. Then I compared wiring diagrams from 1999 XL model F350 and 2006 lariat model F350, and figured out how to power everything from either the existing 99 harness or a new fuse panel powered by an RV relay. Taped it back up, stripped the 99 interior, swapped the old body harness for new, soldered an a$$load of new to old wires, plugged everything in, and it all worked: lights, locks, windows, mirrors. I think THAT one finally impressed my wife, and the truck has not yet burned down. That one looked harder than it was, but not a project to drop for a month midway!
