ok i know im gonna take alot of **** for this but i have a 82 camaro, stock 305, im rebuilding the engine and adding a slightly bigger cam to the engine. the guy at the machine shop said that i can go with a slightly bigger cam without throwing off the computer. thats fine, but my question is, can i just remove the computer completly and throw another non-electric carb on it? i know i will have to remove the o2 sensor also, but im worried about screwing up the distibutor because the small computer also controls the timing advance automatically. any suggestions?
im also not worried about passing emissions cause i can get that easy cause i know someone...lol.


p.s you may ask why a 305?....the answer is the car was practically free and so was the engine work...so im just paying for parts and block cleaning at the shop and i believe in work with what ya got!

 

Welcome aboard.

He's right, a larger cam is possible. The one I'm running is a LOT larger, and the computer is fine with it. The Crane and Comp cams intended for computer compatibility are good choices.

But, stop right there - leave the computer alone. The computer controlled q-jet is actually a good carb, when simple modifications and tuning are applied (see tech articles on this board). People have screwed them up over the years because they didn't try to understand them, but I have truly had zero problems with mine in almost 3 years and over 24k miles, driving it daily and year-round.

If you want to spend a lot more money, go ahead and remove the computer controls. You will in fact need a new distributor along with carb, because they have to be compatible with each other - you can't mix computer and non-computer pieces here. And, gas mileage will most likely drop with non-computer parts. My advice would be to save the money you'd spend on non-computer controlled parts and spend it instead on exhaust upgrades.

Finally, emissions - you'd better watch your step there. Who are you going to take the car to when your "buddy" is in jail for emissions testing fraud? Keep it legal, the performance penalty really isn't that great if you pick your upgrade parts properly.

I also believe in working with what you've got, as I did, and I won't criticize you for rebuilding the 305. But, I will point out that you probably could have picked up a 350 core and it's rebuild parts for very little more money, if any more at all, than you spent on the 305 parts. But, water under the bridge...

 

I have a question about having a non-cc carb and a cc-distributor. This is how my friend set up his car when his stock qjet carb stopped working, he put on a slightly bigger holley and kept the stock distributor. He said the car ran 100 times better than before the carb went. My question is how is his computer advancing the distributor w/o the inputs from the carb? I know people say that you cant mix and match, but has anybody actually tried it or everybody's going by word of mouth? (Not to be rude, but everybody says it... but who's actually tried it?)

Thanks guys.

 

The distributor module has a "limp home" mode advance curve built into it. It is completely inadequate for normal driving. For a race-only application, you may be able to set the base timing so there is enough total advance for it to run decent, but part throttle and idle advance would be all wrong.

If your buddy's car ran better with a Holley and CC distributor than it did with the CC carb, then there was something very wrong with the carb.