After Market Carb
I'll stand corrected on this point, I could have sworn I read (from a reputable source) that the 2280 was a later factory part
That was Reed Speir's 2003 article over on slantsix.org,
here. He's right about almost everything in that piece (or at least, he was right on almost everything as of 2003) but that one bit is an error.
Regardless, if Dan says the 2280 is a good carb, then perhaps I just had bad luck with the example that came with my intake.
Totally reasonable -- I have seen 2280s (and BBDs, and BBSs, and 1920s...) that just plain refuse to behave, no matter how carefully they're put together and set up.
With the Weber 32/36 I have had a substantially better experience
Me, I'll defer to you on that point. I believe you, but I was always able to make the traditional-type carbs (Carter BBS/BBD, Holley 1920/1945, Bendix-Stromberg WA3/WW3) work well and I sorta see the Webers as a black art I'm not really interested in learning (that may change once it becomes completely impossible to get a good factory-type carb any more). I understand the Webers are very highly tunable, but that also implies having to do a lot of tuning (spend a lot of time fiddlefutzing). One thing that puts me off them from the practical standpoint is air cleaner unavailability: those dumb little rectangular K&N "filters" do an okeh job of keeping spiders and rocks out the engine, but as far as actual dust and dirt, they're lousy (see
here and
here—"After only 24 minutes the K&N had accumulated 221gms of dirt but passed 7.0gms. Compared to the AC, the K&N plugged up nearly 3 times faster, passed 18 times more dirt and captured 37% less dirt").
