Holley 1920 Replacement Question

slantsixdan said
It's a fundamentally better design than the 1920 in a fair number of ways. It has some drawbacks that are rather easily corrected; brass floats are available for it, for example.

Mmm...I don't quite agree here. The first couple years of 1945 (1974-5) tend to be more problematic than the '76-'77-'78-'79 items. About the only "smog feature" that you would need to even think about would be the idle enrichment valve, which was used to allow a leaner/faster-off choke. This valve can simply be capped off and ignored on a vehicle not equipped to control it.

I don't know that I'd go quite that far. Yes, the bowl gasket design is dumb, but how many fires have actually been caused by it?

That's what I mean by early.....pre '80's. I haven't had any more problems with the first two years than the later ones. They all seem to have the "loose base" syndrome which translates into vacuum leaks and irratic idle problems. You have to take the thing off the intake just to tighten the screws. Plan on doing that just about every year.
I've bought about a dozen cars with slant 6 engines and carb related fires through the years. All but one had the Holley. The other was a Carter with the inlet fitting stripped. I've had many others that had a leaky Holley and for some lucky reason, hadn't gone up in flames.