No, I either buy a new base plate for about $100 and run it another 100K miles or buy a new Holley. Too many moving parts in an Edelbrock, and they're butt-ugly to boot.

 

but they run a whole lot better than holley....

 

Too many moving parts? As you stomp on the gas the front throttle blades open. At 50% a linkage opens the rear throttle plates. The accelerator pump also gets pushed through it's stroke. Loss of vaccuum allows a spring to push up the metering rod on each side enriching the mixture. When you get enough airflow the air will open the air valve on the secondaries. It's basically a mechanical vacuum secondary. That would be 6 parts.

Hollys, a dp for example, have primaries, secondaries, two accelerator pumps, and two(I think) power valves. 6 parts again.

(From what I've heard and researched) The fun part about hollys are the power valves blowing out, the gaskets that are under the fuel level leaking, and the sight glasses leaking. You can make most metering changes on an edelbrock by loosening two screws. The worst case is you take off the top plate. Easily done on the engine. Hollys you have to disassemble the whole carb, and change air bleeds and jets. Unless you like dumping gas on you engine and contortionist positions it's an off the car job. I like being able to make 4-5 adjustments in an hour, no mess with an edelbrock. On a holly it's 1-2 per hour, and as many gasket sets as adjustments. Carb to manifold gaskets mainly, though I suspect the fuel bowl gasket gets ruined occasionally too.

My guess is for daily drivers the edelbock is more reliable and easier to tune. That being said, I am looking into a speed demon(revised holly) for my weekend driver/ street/strip mustang.

 

What he said!

 

Vacuum sec. Holleys have even fewer parts. And I've NEVER had a power valve blow out and I don't know anyone who has either. Not in thirty something years of using them. I'll say it again, those of you who seem to think they're "high maintenence" carbs simply don't understand them. As such you should probably leave them to those who do. We don't have issues with them. Simplest carb there is , other than the Autolite 2100/4100's. Only thing ,more complicated than an Edelbrock/Carter is the Quadra-****'s.

 

My first "what he said" was for badad. Now my second one too. The main reason people say they don't hold a tune is that they don't know how to adjust the idle. If you start playing with the mixture screws above 1000 rpm you are moving into the intermediate circuit of the carb. Then people use the main idle speed adjustment screw to try and get the idle speed where they think it should be and it won't idle down there because they adjusted the mixture with the intermediate circuit already kicking in. The directions are pretty plain that youi must be under 1000 rpm to adjust the idle mixture. When I first began learning about these in the 70's I was working in a speed shop and we would constantly have people who bought the Holley's saying they couldn't get it to idle. My boss who had been in on racing in the days of Vic Edebrock and Ed Iskendarian... would tell them he could get it right in five minutes if they wanted to pay him. He usually didn't take the money and he always got them right in less than the 5 minutes.

 

How do you do it in five minutes if you have to remove the fuel bowls to change jets and bleeds?

 

If you're removing fuel bowls, changing jets, and attempting to change air bleeds to get a Holley to idle right then there's no wonder you've had problems.

 

thats fine, back then holley was a good carb. but now they suck....I know several people that drag race that wont run them anymore....99% of the time, edelbrock is set right out of the box....I have never had to adjust a edelbrock....if you want to waste your money on holley, thats your choice....but it will run better with a edelbrock....

 

Obvious to me you don't know squat about Holleys either.

 

The last two Holleys i bought were nearly new used ones that the prvious owners couldn't get to run. One tried to run it without a fuel filter. And never took the time to dial in the secondaries ( they'd never been open) With the other , all I had to do was install a new power valve and gaskets, change the sec. spring to a lighter one and it worked perfectly. Paid $125 for one , $150 for the other. I don't need to buy new ones, I let Edelbrock guys do that for me. I just pick up where they left off.

 

so Ford put garbage carbs that don't work on their vehicles coming off the assembly line?

thanks baddad457, i think you have solved the problem with Holleys.

what really tells me "what's up" is that Vic has Holleys on his own cars. a Holley was used for dyno testing the new E-brock heads for an article, might not've been his new Air Gap intake used either?

bottom line is that they are very different carbs, for different people and applications. each has strong points and each has weak points. that "blown power valve" BS is a load of crap, i've had more than a few backfires and never had a "blown power valve", it's usually an excuse for not knowing how to tune/diagnose.

 

here he says that he has never replaced a power valve and he dont know anyone that has, but in his last reply, he was talking about buying a holley and having to replace the power vavle...ummmmmmm interesting...

 

the power valve hardens up after sitting a while, don't know that this is the case here, but....it seems the lines are drawn and not going to change much, so you like the Carter Edelbrock/Weber carb huh? that's nice...................

 

everyone has different experiences with different carbs...I'm sure that the majority of the bias for a given carb manufacturer is probably based off a problem that wasn't even associated with the carb in the first place. I love my Edelbrock 1406 - I didn't have to adjust ANYTHING before I put it on my built 400, and it works like a charm. I could probably get a Holley to work the same way too...