Edelbrock carb adjustment
let me see if I can beat anybody to the punch here that's going to say they've had their Holley carburetor forever and never replace the seal...
What seal?
There are two real problems with the Holley.
The first is Holley refuses to admit that they teach the tuning of their carbs wrong. Of course, many of the clone carbs and certainly the “boutique” car builders of the 1990’s and early 2000’s (and maybe still today) went completely off the rails with crazy emulsion packages and the like. That certainly has its place, but tune up’s like that are the exception and not the rule. Then you get the guys who copy stuff like that without know why it was done, or why the application even called for a tune up like that in the first place.
The second issue is the Holley and the clones are easier to change, and have more to change.
It’s much easier to change emulsion on a holley than most anything else.
The power enrichment circuit is wholly misunderstood and is misused. It is separate from the main jets, where the Carter and the clones are not.
Even the accelerator pump circuit has more options than the Carter.
It’s relatively simple to change the boosters in Holley, and there are many choices of booster, and they all do something differently.
The float bowls don’t sit over engine heat like a Carter. Most guys can set the float level so close on assembly that even without sight glasses it’s not an issue. You don’t have to pull the top to adjust the float levels.
Jet changes are quicker, and you don’t have the metering rods to figure in.
You can easily make the Holley open 1:1, which is another option.
The float bowls are bigger, and with Fuel Chute bowls, you can easily increase the bowl volume.
Because the Holley is used in so many different applications, and because it has been produced for what...SEVEN DECADES and because there are so many companies doing modifications and even producing these carbs, that the tuning variations make the carb seem complicated, when it’s not.
I could go on, but all theses options, and the misinformation out there makes the Holley seem impossible to tune. It’s not. You just need to be methodical about it.
And certainly, the Holley can and will make more power, and as good fuel economy as anything else. You just have to realize that the vast majority of these carbs are a “universal” fit, which means they universally fit nothing correctly out of the box.
