One of my car buff friends was telling me to get a mechanical carborator. He said that instead of using suction to open it uses mechanical means. I've never heard of it but I was wondering if anyone else has and where I could purchase one.

 

Is he talking about a mechanical secondary carb instead of a vacuum secondary carb?

 

perhaps this is a reference to what I
call a 'slide' carb, often used on motorcycles.

The slide can move in two ways,
venturi vacuum, or
right off the throttle - aka mechanical

 

Yeah it's the mechanical secondary carb

 

You can get them anywhere, but you'd need to replace more than just the carb to use it. In the end the gains wouldn't be that great, unless you were drag racing or something.

 

Such as new intake manifold?

 

Possibly, depends what manifold you have, and what carb you use.

A Holley 6210 would work with a stock intake, but a 4150 would not.

 

Possibly a new manifold. Certainly a new distributor and some odds and ends to lock the TCC up without a computer.

 

New dissy? didnt an '82 LG4 have a vac advance distributor?

 

Only in Canada.

Tripper, sounds to me like your "car buff" friend is more of a magazine buff. While what he is saying is true for a drag race car, you wouldn't see any benefit on your stock engine with a properly operating stock carb on the street.

 

So it would be better to get a mech carb than a vac one when you have a very big and agressive cam?

 

Not necessarily... I think what Five7 was getting at, is that on a street car, its not really worth the money and effort. Mechanical secondary carbs also don't get along with automatics as well as vacuum secondary carbs do. Big cams make the problem that much greater.

 

When you say automatics do are you talking about the transmission. I have a 4 speed manual so would it have a difference?

 

Not really, the stock Qjet is still probably a better choice for you, at least for now.

 

Mechanical secondary carbs work best with manual transmissions, but if your engine isn't far from stock, then changing it won't really do you much good.