Ok. I'm planning out how to spend my tax return next month, and one of the things I need to fix is my carburetor situation. Last Spring I bought one of the $150 Autozone quadrajets and have had endless problems with it. When I gave up working on it for the Winter, I still had gas running out of it all over the place.
I don't want to mess around with it anymore, so I'm looking for suggestions on what to replace it with. This will be purely street driving, but I still want to have fun with it.
I need recommendations for a carb for a Pontiac 350, stock 4bbl intake, easy to tune, not TOO expensive. I'm hoping for around the $300 range.
Is there any warranty? Most parts come with a one year so take it back and get another. Other than that it sounds like bad floats, stuck needle valve, loose screws holding the body together, along with bad gaskets between body sections. Edelbrock and Carter AFB are pretty user friendly and come with a tech line attached. You probably want to go with one smaller than 600 cfm.
I bought the "Autozone special" and had nothing but problems with it also. Even had to rebuild it after I bought it because of a defective float. I ended up buying a Barry Grant Road Demon Jr., vacuum secondary, 625 cfm. I'm glad I did. Slapped it on, adjusted the idle speed, adjusted the float levels, and instantly felt like I picked up 25 HP over the Quadrajet. I think they are going for $289 (plus shipping) also. The only downside is that the carb is so beautiful compared to the Qjet you don't want to put an air cleaner on it.
G.J. 68 350 Coupe "Can hear the Qjet legion calling Blasphemy already!"
Do you have you Road Demon carb on a stock manifold or aftermarket? I'd have to install a square-spread bore adapter plate and I'm worried about the air cleaner hitting the hood.
I belive Cliff Ruggles has Q-Jets in stock that he will taylor fit for your car and he is highly recomended but if originality is not a concern I would second the Demon carbs.
One problem with quads off the shelf is that you cannot get high performance primary jets and secondary metering rods and/or hangers with them.
Rather than wading through one of my mispelled rants, use a search engine to find articles about jets and metering rods. If you see pictures of the various sizes of metering rods and different ptiches of hangers, it becomes clear. The only problem is that you cannot find the high performance jets, rods, and hangers.
(I saw a mix of metering rods and jets on eBay. Eveyrthing was there exept for the high performance ones. The price was through the roof. Imagine the buyer when s/he found out that these were the low performance ones that you could get for free out of trash carbs.)
This little known syndrome is probally the sole cause of the bad names of Quadrajets. I found the problem by pure luck, and I have never heard of anyone else finding the problem. If the "experts" are installing the jesus clip, and they are getting loading up complaints, this could be the cause. Before you give up on the quad, try this:
I had an intermittent loading up problem with my quad. I rebuilt it a bezillion times, along with a bezillion floats, all set at various levels.
On the last load up ever--around 1987--I took off the lid. When I touched the float, I noticed that the seat was sitting cadywampus, not sitting on its seat. The jesus clip--the wire clip that attaches the needle to the float--was making it bind. (I had replaced the jesus clip as many times as everything else.)
Because it's impossible for the needle to fall out, even if the car was upside down, I took the jesus clip out and tried the car. It has never loaded up since.
If anyone has a quad load up problem, I would strongly recommend that you remove the jesus clip. If someone could explain why the jesus clip is a nessessary part, I'd be more than willing to listen to their defense for keeping the part in service.
