Carbs

[bigdawgchallenger]

Holley or Edelbrock?

I just bought 800 CFM Edelbrocks because they were 1/2 the price of Holley. Did I make a mistake?

I can still return them.

Mike

[mrfixxall]

Holley or Edelbrock?

I just bought 800 CFM Edelbrocks because they were 1/2 the price of Holley. Did I make a mistake?

I can still return them.

Mike


no! their easier to work on..give me a part #,i thought edlbrock only made up to a 750 cfm carb for marine..

if they have vacume hoses then return them for the marine ones..

[bigdawgchallenger]

Whoops, my bad. 1410 = 750 CFM

[mrfixxall]

Whoops, my bad. 1410 = 750 CFM


go with it! i hope you left the lifter valley baffel in the engines..:)

[bigdawgchallenger]

ah, whats that?

Im using the Performer air gap intake? is that what you mean

[bigdawgchallenger]

what do they do besides keep the oil off the intake? do i need it?

Is it worth tearing it apart?

[mrfixxall]

what do they do besides keep the oil off the intake? do i need it?

Is it worth tearing it apart?


dont worry about it with the airgap :)

[Planetwarmer]

I prefer Edlebrock. Easier to work on, and Holleys always seem to run a bit rich for me. Must be my poor tuning skills. Holleys are easier to set the float bowl heights though (comes in handy in rock rigs).

[Dr. David Fleming]

Both the carburators you are talking about Holly and Eldebrock are American designs developed in the 1950's and 60's when carbs were a state of the art.

The Eldebrock design and manufacturing machinery for the carburator you have was made by Carter Carburator Co. in St. Louis, Mo. Carter was a great company started back in the 1920's by Will Carter. They developed a great four barrel carb in the 1950's called the AFB - Aluminum Four Barrel and then with GM help in the 1960's revised it into the AVS - Air Valve Secondary. The big AFB version flowed 750cfm and the big AVS flowed 810cfm. Smaller versions were available. GM helped clean all the "stuff" out of the rear barrels so that they were just bored holes with big brass tubes to dump the fuel in. This got them the 60cfm increase between AFB and AVS. They put a spring loaded air valve over this bored barrel setup and this kept the engine from gulping too much air.

The AVS/AFB designs were out of production in 1982? when the factory workers rebelled and destroyed the AVS tooling when they heard manufacturing was going over to Italy. Webber Carburator Company, a fine Italian company bought out Carter. Webber eventually came out with a version of the AFB that had some stuff from the AVS so that the two designs were merged together. This is what Mercruiser was using on the BBC in the 1990's. Eldebrock marketed this carb under their own name but both Webber and Eldebrock carbs are really the old Carter carbs. Nice because a lot of old Carters are running with gaskets and parts still available.

Carter carbs were good carbs because they had a one piece float bowl that never leaked gasoline. They were simple to rejet by taking off the top you could get at the entire insides. You had to get the float adjustment set with a ruler which was a lot more primitive than the Holly set up. Holley used a sight plug you could remove and then you adjusted the float and needle assembly while the engine was running untill the gas was at the bottom of the sight plug - real trick.

The Holley four barrel is called the Model 4150 no matter what the carb number is. It was designed by engine tuner Smokey Yunick who ran a hot rod and car repair shop in Daytona Beach. He developed many engine designs for GM racing and came up with a lot of ideas that he wrote into books. He raced occasionally at Daytona.

The Holley 4150 was a great racing carburator and was used by most racers from its development in the 1960's. It was cleaner than the Carter and flowed a lot of air. Holley featured vacume secondary barrels that the engine would open by itself. This was later modified to a series of carbs that had mechanical secondary barrels. Holley had vertical float bowls, one for the primary barrels and one for the secondary barrels. This made duel four barrels setups difficult until manifolding for them was developed. They also made a half of a four barrel into a great two barrel setup that was ganged up into "six pack" - three two barrel setups. GM used this on the 1970 Corvette BBC and Chrysler on the 440 and 340 engines. Holley had vertical float bowls that had gaskets which would leak gasoline all over the engine and they were fire hazards if they had bad gaskets. Big 4150 carbs would flow 780cfm and 850cfm, slightly better than the Carter. Eventually, Holley came out with several giant carburators with the same float bowls and fuel metering parts these were the 1000cfm Dominator series Holley carburators. Holley carbs are still manufactured.

Rochester - This carburator company was a subsidiary of GM and they used it for most of their cars. BBC was usually equipped with the famous Rochester "Quadrajet" carburator and many Mercruiser engines had this carb but it was not really a performance carburator. Racers would generally remove this carb as it was infamously called the "Quadra bog" indicating its general lack of gas flow. The Rochester was cheap to build and had fewer parts that the Holley and Carter.

Autolite - Thats right, Ford was not to be out done and sort of made a carb that looked like a Holley and came apart like a Carter. THey manufactured it in house, and it was never a serious performance carb. This carb eventually had powervalves like Holley and air valves like Carter and was a real bastard as far as most tuners were concerned.