Weber K550 on a 258

I just recently decided to get rid of my old Carter YF carburetor and upgrade to a Weber/Redline K550 32/36 DGEV "kit".
I was pretty disappointed for a lot of reasons.
I always expect a little tweaking to get most aftermarket goodies to work but this thing was a real pain.
I brought just about every tool I could think of that I might need and ended up having to go out and buy others. (the Jeep is about 150 miles from my home)
For instance, don't expect to find what is in the kit picture on the website to be in the box you get.
I know this is not that unusual but it seemed pretty arbitrary and became very irritating to have to make yet another long trip to the hardware and/or auto parts store store because they decided to remove parts or switch parts out that I needed for no apparent reason.
I called Redline to ask about missing and wrong parts and the guy told me straight up you don't get what is in the picture. When I asked him why, he didn't have an answer. I emailed Redline and Weber about the other issues a week and a half ago and no answer at all so far.
I was not prepared to find that the carb cable bracket in the kit does not even mount on the right side of the carburetor to pull the linkage.
In my case, the carb to manifold adapter did not appear to have been finish machined (or was poorly designed) and I had to cut my stock studs. (had to buy another Dremel tool)
I am going to have to bend and cut my throttle cable bracket to get it to work and, thanks to the earlycj5.com forum, I found out from another guy on here that I will have to cut the sheath around the carb end of the throttle cable to get the proper amount of linkage travel.
There were several other things wrong or missing too but you get the general idea.
I was told by the dealer that Redline and Weber would stand behind their products but so far, after the one call I made to Redline I have not been able to get any answer back from either of them.
My impression of the experience is that, they sell a kit that they say is specifically for my Jeep and engine package but in reality it was not even close.
I think they did a very poor job with their bills of materials, marketing, engineering and their support so far has been MIA.
If I had it to do over again, I would probably just buy the carburetor alone because the Redline "kit" causes more problems than its worth. I'll end up throwing half the parts that came in the kit in the junk parts bin and I had to go out and buy others that they plainly showed in the "kit" picture as being in the kit.
Not well thought out, poorly executed and a lot of wasted time, energy, money and extra aggravation.
Redline/Weber's complete silence on all this tells me a lot about them.

 

Yeah, I know....Isn't it funny/sad how exited we get when a supplier or manufacturer just does the right thing? We have become so accustom to being hosed, that when we buy something that works or if the people stand behind it...we almost go into shock.
You (well, I) seem to find this sort of behaviour more in the off-road world than anywhere else. I am sure there are some other forms of the hobby that get the run around as well, but my hobby is off-road and my job is high performance engine stuff. The high performance stuff is almost always very high quality, if it's not, the business will go under in nothing flat. If you have a problem with high performance stuff...the people who made it seem to be happy to help (most of the time).
Change that tune to off-road parts and most send junk, and then treat you like it's your fault that they sent you junk...it's a different world.
There are exceptions to both sides of that of course, but just generally speaking.
Anyway...I would say that if you were going to do it again, maybe you should have tried the 2100 conversion.

 

What dealer did you purchase it from? I hate it when these places blatenley lie about their products! I bought some expensive aftermarket clutch linkage kits for one of my CJ's and it wasn't even close to working unless I wanted to cut the tub through a panel seam...

 

AFAIK Redline is the only game in town. I believe they are the sole importers of the Weber carbs. They distribute their kits through retailers, but it's the same product.

 

I agree with Mcgillacuddy 100%.
Its kind of like a whiner/wuss contest with the manufacturer and I think thats just pitiful.
The only reason I said anything is, this time I was far from my garage and tools trying to do this
and this one got an A+ in aggravation, expense and stupid.
It just gripes my rear when the installation ends up being half Kragen and half True Value Hardware and it looks like it.
I also agree with Tim. I bought the carb and kit from a dealer in So. Cal and he immediately referred me to Redline when I first got the kit and found all the parts I didn't want or need or that were missing. Lame-o response phone call from Redline, nothing from Weber.
That was only the first trip to the store.
When I started to put the "kit" together and started finding all the other stuff I was not expecting and was not prepared to deal with, I emailed Redline and Weber and asked what was up with this "kit". I even took and sent them pictures of their wretched mess.
My feeling is, if I were Weber and trying to sell their carburetors through another dealer (even though the Redline kit is shown on Weber's site) and Redline had failed as spectacularly as they did, I would at least contact the customer and let him know I was working to get to the bottom of it and correct the problem. I guess after a week and a half and counting, I'm not going to get an answer. Next sucker please.
I know this is the height of dreaming but I'd like to get my money back for the Redline portion of this "kit".
I know I'm never going to get anyone at Redline by the throat so the money would be really nice. )