Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The Carter Carburetor Corporation of Saint Louis was built in the 1920's and operated here until 1984.
The company was founded by William Carter, a bicycle shop owner who experimented with automotive carburetors. He soon sold the company to the American Car and Foundry company (ACF), which had been instrumental in the earliest refrigerated railcars (utilized by Anheuser Busch and Armour & Co) and whose Berwick plant built the first ever all-steel passenger locomotive car.
Saint Louis' Carter Carburetor plant manufactured carburetors for gasoline as well as diesel engines. Carter Produced the first Four-Barrel carburetor in America, which was among the most popular carburetor type. It was used on many brands of cars and was especially suited for high power engines. Carter even produced their competitor's products (the Rochester Quadrajet) when the demand was high enough. Other notable carburetors produced here were those made for the Willys Jeeps. These modified carburetors were waterproof and the Y-S model was capable of keeping the engine running even at steep inclines.
The rise of fuel injection meant the downfall of the carburetor in automobiles and in 1984, the plant closed. It is currently an EPA superfund site due to PCB and other contaminations, the cleanup of which is estimated to cost $30 million.
