Thursday, September 20, 2018

How a Holley Four-Barrel Carburetor is Made

Very cool article over at Hagerty.com

They take you from a pile of parts to a complete 4160 carburetor with pix of it all.


14 comments:

  1. I've rebuilt enough of those that I have enough parts left over to build another. :)

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  2. Pretty cool. Lots and lots of fiddly bits.

    I rebuilt a two barrel once, never a four.

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    Replies
    1. Same principles, just some slightly different parts, and more of them.

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    2. Holley two barrel: #4412, a 500cfm carb that would bolt in place of the Motorcraft two barrel, ~300cfm, found on the 289/302 v8's. REALLY pep them up, but kill the fuel mileage. Maybe 15-18 mpg, vs 30 mpg.

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    3. Yeah, the big Holley 2-bbl was a specialty carb for certain racing classes. I had a friend who replace all the carbs on hid tri-power with them. Ran like stink at WOT, but was sluggish around town.

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  3. Back in the day had a knack for setting up three SU carbs. Living in the mountains you learned to re-jet carbs. Don't remember what brand it was but partially overhauled a carb on an International 26' Box Truck outside of Baker City, OR and re-secured the float with stripped wire from a marker light. Ran fine all the way to Seattle.

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    1. Could you do it by ear, or did you use a UniSyn? I never did too many triples, maybe 4 or 5, but did a boat load of double and single SU setups.

      And Webers, and Mikuni, and Solex.

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    2. I could do a single by ear, and I finally got pretty good doing doubles, but I always had the UniSyn in the top of the toolbox.

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  4. Holleys were a LOT easier to rebuild than Quadrajets... And yes, leftover parts... LOL My grandpa did SUs and Webers, but I never tried them!

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  5. Holley's "just had jets", where the Q-Jets also had metering rods, and the interplay between the jets and rods was where the magic of tuning a Q-Jet came in.

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  6. Only ever saw one Q-Jet set up for serious performance in the South Philly area. On a '68 BBC Chevelle Convertible built as a sleeper street racer. Two bolt, 325hp 396, TH400, 456 posi. Absolutely nothing was stock on that motor when they got done with it. As long as it wasn't running, it looked like a joke under the hood*.
    Someone really knew how to set up that carb. Ran perfectly, at near twice the hp. Unfortunately, there was still the too small primary circuit, so you quite often were making more power than you needed for driving when the secondaries opened up. That Chevelle only got beat by three cars, and none of them were driven to the races.

    *The carb was painted gold, the chrome valve covers and other parts were painted orange. NO ONE who heard it idling would race against it. It was built to race for money wagers. Mostly you never even opened the hood for other people to see, although this car was done to fool them.

    It was not unusual to have Pro-Stock or other serious racers trucked to these races for big money. Wheelie bars were used, and drag 'chutes were mounted but seldom deployed. LONG streets. Normally, no names or graphics were seen on these cars or transporters, and they typically were both plain white.

    I never saw them, but I was told that Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters occasionally would show up, but that was typically done on Sunday afternoon, not Fri/Sat night.

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  7. I studied and experimented with Q-Jets until I knew them cold. I had a nice little sideline going where I'd rejet and adjust your Q-Jet for $25. Went through a couple of hundred over the years I did it.

    The one on my 1970-spec Ram Air IV in my '73 Firebird was good for 13-flat at 118 MPH with the headers open, on street tires, quite the accomplishment Back-In-The-Day.....

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