Mike, before you get to excited about a $2000 fuel injection set up. Unless you have a tuner that is REALLY good with that particular system, you will be on suicide watch after your FI adventure. You only think this carb is a pain in the ass until you get a FI system no one can tune. I HIGHLY suggest finding a tuner and a system they use if you even consider FI.

I have had no luck at all with "package systems" in Forced induction applications and have been forced to use more elaborate sytems like DFI, FAST, and Bigstuff, which by the time you buy everything you need will run you up into the $4000 range pretty quick.

Your not trying to push a ton of boost thorugh that carb, you should be able to find someone that can tune it.

Then something is wrong.

Back when my car was blowthrough I drove it frequently, even in stop and go traffic between the central valley and the bay area quite a few times (one of those 90 miles in 3 hour trips.) My carb worked fine, A/C on, in 100 degree heat.

A good blowthrough carb will drive and perform very well. It won't have as good of economy as EFI but driveability and and power should not be an issue with a properly setup blowthrough carb.

A poor hat will kill driveability and tuneability because of poor and uneven airflow distribution even if you have the best carb prep in the world.

I would strongly suggest trying a good hat as the next logical step and from there move onto looking closer at the carb. A carb hat isn't that much money and might solve your problems.

The Carb Shop
 

Mike,

You may want to call these guy's and talk to them about your problems if you really think it is carb-related. We know you don't want to spend any more money but you might be able to ship the carb down to them in Ontario, California. I have not used them but I have talked to guys that had problems, called them and bought the carb that corrected the issues. Maybe they can do something on existing? here is their website http://www.customcarbs.com/Home.htm

I wish I had the time to go to MA. Thanks for that great offer though. That was cool of you to do that. :cheers:

Yeah I think you're right about that. Do you know which carb hat has worked best in the past? Hood clearence is also an issue. It's not the hat itself, but the end of the hat from the pipe that comes into it.

I had no prior experience with efi. With a little help from delta t at pro-touring.com (he has a 383 with a vortech and holley efi) we got it tuned. Its not a hard system and does what I need it to do. Alot of people are running this efi setup with no problems. Sorry it didnt work out for you frank. I think its a great system for the $$. Chevytalk.com has a lot of info for holley efi check it out. A member on this site is a engineer for holley. I know alot of people are running carbs with no problems but for all the money you need to spend on a carb, wideband etc.. You could go efi for a few bucks more and tune on a laptop. Better than changing jets and airbleeds.

Frank should of just talked you into one of those World all aluminum BBC. More power, less money, and less hassle. ;)

EV, CSU, and SDCE all make the good hats. I posted a couple pages back with a link.

I think the SDCE hat is going to be the lowest of all the options (and it includes an integrated surge valve mount to simplify things)-- but it wouldn't hurt to call and get measurements for all of them.

Even if you have to leave the hood off for dyno testing at least you can rule out the hat as a problem... or if you're really lucky it will fix the problem.

If I hadn't sold my SDCE-modded hat last year I'd let you borrow it for testing. Worked great on my car at 15 psi.

Rule Out the hat
 

+1 Rule out the hat.

Carbs do work. EFI is hard to tune, also. Find a guy in your area that tune a lot of EFI if you are going to change to EFI. Packaged/pre tuned EFI are not good in all situations.

the carb is not the issue....

I would look at the hat and the cam before changing anything else.