Carter/Ball carburetor- Help ID

[Markbo]

1971 Dart
Running a Holley 1BL (6260-2) so this would be a 1920? It needs a rebuild due to leaking, and stumbles bad on acceleration.

Before I do that, I also have a Carter which was included with the car when I purchased it. There is no tag, so not even sure of the model. Is this identifiable? If so, do you have an opinion as to which carb I should use? Better gas mileage with the Carter?

Thanks,
M

 

[Markbo]

1971 Dart
Running a Holley 1BL (6260-2) so this would be a 1920? It needs a rebuild due to leaking, and stumbles bad on acceleration.

Before I do that, I also have a Carter which was included with the car when I purchased it. There is no tag, so not even sure of the model. Is this identifiable? If so, do you have an opinion as to which carb I should use? Better gas mileage with the Carter?

Thanks,
M

Sorry, forgot the pics. Here they are.

 

[KosmicKuda]

Carter BBS as used on lots of slants. (Ball and Ball because there are 2 ball bearings inside)
SSD will probably chime in here and for sure say use that over the Holley. Buy a quality rebuild kit from Daytona and make careful adjustments per the FSM and you'll be good. Make sure the float doesn't leak.
I rebuilt my 64 BBS and it's been flawless over 2500 miles.

 

[slantsixdan]

That Carter BBS you're showing us is a bit of a mongrel. It has the main casting from a '71 (+'70 California) carb, but the top casting/air horn from a '70 (49-state) carb. It will work, but you won't be able to hook up the evaporative emission control hose that runs from the body of the fuel pump (not its inlet/outlet fittings, but the body near where it bolts to the engine) to that top-front hose nipple on the Carter carb, the one that's capped off. No big dealbreaker; you'll just have a stronger raw-gas smell around the car when you shut it off with a hot engine, especially in hot weather.

Of the two carbs, the Carter is the better design, but carb condition is more important; a brand-new Holley 1920 would be preferable to a beat-to-hell Carter BBS. Go through the Carter with a good quality carb kit from Daytona; ask for a kit for a Carter BBS 4716s and you'll get the right kit. Even the best kits no longer come with a usable float gauge, you just get a useless strip-of-paper ruler, so see here. Carburetor operation and repair manuals and links to training movies and carb repair/modification threads are posted here for free download.

The Carter's fuel inlet is on the front rather than on the side like the Holley, so take that as an excuse to do the Fuel line mod.

(for many years I thought "Ball & Ball" referred to the two check balls inside the carb, but that's not so; it refers to the Ball family who had a carburetor company that was later bought out by Carter with the assistance of Chrysler chief engineer Carl Breer; see here)

 

[BillGrissom]

In general, Holley's are considered superior, but they are also more finicky and the 1920 was a low-cost design and has some endemic problems. Biggest is that the sealed metering block inside gets clogged up, which makes a lean idle, and most rebuilders don't touch it, thus many bad ones in the system. Another is that the fuel bowl cork gasket is below the fuel level, so a potential leak and fire hazard. Of course, any carb can overflow fuel if the fill needle sticks open, but that only happens with engine running and usually kills it from "too rich". The BBS on my 64 slant runs it so smooth that you can hardly tell the engine is idling. The silenced air cleaner helps too.

 

[slantsixdan]

In general, Holley's are considered superior

{{citation needed}} because no they ain't. There are people who prefer them—just like there are people who prefer Oldsmobiles or Toyotas, just like there are people who prefer chocolate ice cream or strawberry, etc—but there sure as hell ain't no general consensus that the Holley 1920 is superior to the Carter BBS. The 1920 has several engineering/design-level shortcomings compared to the Carter BBS: in addition to the two you mentioned, the side-hung float makes the 1920 prone to stallout on hard left turns. The Carter BBS has its own annoyances and eventual wear-out points, but none of the is anywhere near as serious as those three crap aspects of the 1920.

That said, though, at this late date carb condition is more important. A new 1920 is a better pick than a worn-out BBS. Wait, did someone already say that?

 

[BillGrissom]

As mentioned, the Holley 1920 was designed for lowest cost, and it wasn't just used on Mopars. "Holley better than Carter" is mainly in early 4 bbl world where factory Holley usually had vacuum secondaries vs mechanical in Carter. The later is the Edelbrock after-market seen on gazillion muscle cars, and is simple and reliable if not quite as good on performance & mileage. But, the 4 bbl design peak was the Rochester Quadrajet (GM's) vs Carter Thermoquad (Mopars), both with tiny primary bores ("spread-bore"), and closely matched, so Carter did catch up in the end. Both are way too large to use on slants. Of course none of this matches later TBI or MPFI.