So I took my car to the track for first time since I bought it, and I'm running 18's. I know its a tuning issue, since the engine won't run over 3,000 rpm.

It is carbureted with an edelbrock carb, but I don't know anything about it. I know nothing about carbs- I've always been a fuel injection guy, which is why I'm considering megasquirt in the near future. But, for the time being, is there anything I can do?


I've put two questions in the picture- that plate that sits over the top of the lower (closest to front of engine) area doesn't appear to be connected to anything and doesn't really move- what is it?

Also, what do those two screws do?

If you can identify that carb, maybe I can just download the manual and figure it out on my own. I need to do something- this car is slow as sin!

Thanks guys.

 

what you are pointing to is the choke, its electric so it is actuated by the round black piece on the passenger side, make sure its hooked up, there is also a piece of linkage that is attached to the throttle linkage that does not allow WOT if the choke is on, i can see it in the pic. BUT.... the carb looks totally whipped and is probably shot to hell. i would suggest a new one...

the two screws on the front are idle screws, you use them to adjust the idea air/fuel mixture

its an edelbrock performer series carb, three is a model # stamped on the front of one of the two front mounting feet. it will be a 14** # probably a 1411 or a 1406

if the choke plate does not move you will have drivability issues, check the round place piece on the driver side, it looks lie it has a blue wire going to it. it should have a 12v power and a ground. check to see how its adjusted you will see little hash marks of the aluminum next to the piece and a pointer on the black part. the more clockwise it is turned, the longer the choke will be on.

 

It looks like an edelbrock vaccum secondary carb, 600cfm maybe? The 2 screw in the front are to adjust the idle mixture, the thing with the 2 arrows u made is for the choke, it's not suppose to be connected on that side, on the other side there should be a linkage conencting it to the soldenoid.

 

Thanks for the quick replies. I checked, and while the choke solenoid is definitely wired up properly (checked with my multimeter), it doesn't move at all, even if I start the engine.

That's probably one of my many problems. Do those solenoids go bad regularly?

I found a similar carb on ebay without the electic choke for about 100 bucks, do you think it would just be easier to do that?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/EDELB...87534236QQrdZ1

 

if its a race car and has no need of a choke, sure. its a 750. i dont know what you engine puts out and a 750 is probably a little big.

the carb still has a manual choke

 

Lol, I'm way out of my element here. I guess I should decide if I'm going fuel injection or carb, and if I decide on carb, I need to learn waaay more. I've spent the past couple years learning fuel injection, but the wallet is stopping me from moving forward.

 

Yea, a carb is pretty simple - might as well do some learning and tuning. It won't take you long to master it. That carb is pretty worn out, you might be able to rebuild it to spec, but again, it's not a good performance carb.

What intake is that? A weiand...? Maybe look at a holley 750 double pumper, it's give you more snap.

An evoluzione? POST PICTURES OF THAT SWEET THING! What a dirty engine to be in an evoluzione...

Know any specs on the engine?

I'm not knowledgeable with edelbrock carbs, but if you jump 12V to your choke thermostat there, it should start to heat up and move the blades open. If not, it might be as simple as needing a new choke thermostat. Fairly easy and cheap.

 

if the choke is not working , you can loosen the 3 screws on the choke cover (the black thing) and turn it until it holds the choke open all the time. as too which way , just try it . one way it closes it harder , the other way opens it.

 

i agree that it needs to be rebuilt, it defintly looks like its hurting, edelbrock arent racing carbs, there outstanding for daily drivers, which is what they are jetted for.

 

Ok, so I went out and adjusted the choke to the point that it is always open. What a difference! Still not a complete fix, but the car has much more power in the 2500-3000 range (still can't go over 3,000 though).

Actually, the car started just like it did before I adjusted the choke, since it never really worked.

As to the dirty engine... I know! I've been so busy building the body that I am just now starting to work on the engine and performance. In fact, here is a video of my 18 second run (actually, it was more like a 17 second run, but I slammed on the brakes at the end since I dialed in assuming the worst)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLUb-w24FA

On a side note, here is a pic of the car, also still a work in progress:



Anyway, back to carb tuning. The engine is a 350, with what appear to be stock heads. SLP Headers to a 3" catback, Weiand intake manifold, edelbrock carb. I'm debating just taking the car to a local race shop and having them either tune it or at least give me an opinion after driving it. Or should I just buy a new carb and start from scratch?

 

Interesting camaro, looks like an eclipse. Ditch the edelbrock carb if you want a race car, get a demon.

 

ive heard a lot of horror stories recently about the quality control of the demon carbs

 

Ah, grasshopper, you have a problem with your carb that might solve many riddles for you. Let me tell you a long-winded and needlessly time-wasting story to make my point.......

It's about a very experienced racer/mechanic who thought he knew everything about tuning a carb. And then one day he found that he could not make his car run anywhere near it's potential. After many hours of frustration he finally found the problem- and a simple one at that. HIS DAMNED THROTTLE WASN'T GETTING FULL OPEN! Almost nobody who works on hot rods hasn't gotten tripped up by this at least once (including myself which is where this story comes from).

Moral of the story.... that is the most rigged piece of junk throttle linkage setup I've ever seen. WRONG cable stud where the trottle cable is attaching to the carb throttle arm- somebody put a cruise control stud on there for you and the cable is at a SEVERE angle to the throttle cable bracket. And angle that will get worse the more you open the throttle, too. Beyond that I'll almost guarantee that the throttle cable bracket is NOT adjusted correctly even if you put the right stud on it. You MUST make sure the carb gets FULLY open when you put the pedal to the carpet or it'll never perform to it's potential.

The correct throttle cable stud for your Eddy is part number 8009. And make sure you put it in the right hole! I think you'll probably end up getting a different throttle cable bracket, too. The location of that one looks too close to the throttle arm to allow full throttle operation (possibly the reason somebody tried to use that cruise control stud in the first place to take out some slack??). You can buy an adjustable one for cheap from Spectre in the cheap chrome parts aisle for about $15 that has adjustments for both the throttle cable and the trans kickdown/TV cable. Your current one looks like it only has adjustment capability for the trans cable right now (although it's a little tough to tell from that picture).

I am NOT saying this is your only problem (there are likely to be others judging by the rig job) but I'll bet $20 it is a significant contributing factor.

All this an we haven't even asked about your ignition timing yet. Welcome to the deep end of the pool- fixing somebody else's rig job with limited experience. I could probably get that motor running strong in less than an hour becuase I know right where to look for the usual "mistakes" of previous owners when converting over from the original computer controlled QJet system. But your first time through it can be a daunting task.

If you live driving distance from the Philly area I could help you out some weekend if you want.

 

Thanks for the good info, Damon! I was toying with the idea of buying a rebuilt Edelbrock 1406, since thats what I already have on there. I was thinking it would just drop in since the linkages would all be the same, but you're saying that the linkage is already messed up (and I believe you)

After I took it to the track, I was hoping there would be an easy route that I could just throw like $100 at to fix it, but it is looking a bit complicated. If I were to buy a rebuilt Edelbrock 1406, would I still need to buy new linkages and whatnot, or would it come with them?

My goal is to spend as little as possible on the carburetor, since I'm still not sure if I want to do aftermarket fuel injection just yet. Or maybe I should just quit crying about carburetors and buy a good one and learn how to tune it.

Agh, I'm lost. I might have to take you up on your offer in Philly... I'll bring the beers.

 

That's a slick looking car. I still have the issue of "kit car" magazine where the evoluzione debuted. Did you build it, or buy it pre-evoluzioned?

I think an Edelbrock rebuild kit and those brackets damon mentioned are probably your best bet for now. I agree Ignition would be my 2nd thought for why you can't get over 3000RPM. It's sad with a car that looks like that kicking the bucket at 3000RPM

Then you can tear into the shortblock, that baby NEEDS 400HP to go as good as it looks.

 

I bought the car in progress- some of the metal cutting was done, but nothing beyond that. I assembled the whole thing myself, and still have a ways to go. Luckily, the wheels were free! I've got 335's in the rear sitting on pretty big rims.

When I was at the track, some guys helped me adjust my transmission cable, which helped quite a bit, but while they were down there, they pointed out that my distributor is "locked" - no vacuum advance possible. Is this as bad as they made it seem?

I like the idea of the throttle brackets and a rebuild, I think I'll try it out. My money is tied up in this project in phases, and this week was supposed to be air suspension (as you can see in the pic, it needs to be waay lower), but it looks like this week's paycheck will be engine tuning!

If I can get even halfway decent times with the engine, then I can continue to move forward with the project.

 

Not bad for the track, but not good for the street.

All that work on the body (which is not my cup of tea), and no attention to simple things like proper throttle cable attachment and proper choice of distributor.

 

I was having the same problem with the Edelbrock electric choke on my carb, so I just took all the choke junk off the carb and it starts and runs better than it did with the choke! So that is my advice to you, just rip it all out of the carb! and yeah, spend the $20 for the rebuild kit, it seriously only takes like 30 minutes tops to rebuild performer series carbs

 

I agree, its not finished yet. I have literally been building the body all winter, so I haven't even started to work on the engine. In fact, I only started driving the car 2 or 3 weeks ago, and that was just to move it between my house and my parents house. So, now its time for the attention to the simple things. Having a front clip on the car takes precedence over proper throttle cable attachment and distributor choice, lol.

My goal was originally to go with megasquirt'nspark, which would fix both of those problems (distributor and carburetor). But, I'm finally at a crossroads in the build where I have to make that decision, and I'll be spending quite a bit of time and money regardless of which decision I make, as both end up costing about the same (good carb+good distributor vs. ms'ns).

Ritter- thanks for the advice. I think I agree about removing the choke, it seems to take care of alot of headaches for me. Right now I have it temporarily adjusted to stay permanently open, and the tires actually start to break loose on accelerating. Still doesn't help my higher rpm tuning, but makes a huge difference nonetheless!

 

Alright, so I found that my local autozone has the rebuild kit. Nice.

But, now that I'm researching a bit more, it seems that my problem may also lie in the distributor- the car was originally fuel injected, but is now carbed. That means the the distributor has no advance at all, since it was originally controlled by the computer. Do you think this has more of a negative effect than a poorly tuned carb?

I'm starting to grasp this stuff a bit better, I really appreciate everybody's help. Its difficult to figure out what the previous owner did and therefore what needs to be changed.

 

Yes. Ignition always has to be straight and operating properly before you do any carb tuning.

 

Agreed with five7kid. You need to replace it with an earlier non-computer controlled HEI to get some advance going. There's another BIG part of your power problem right there. You can pick up new HEIs from various places for around $100-130. Drop in it, set initial timing around 12* BTDC and prepare for a BIG jump in power.

 

Will do. I'll try to pick one up or order one today. I also picked up a carb rebuild kit, although I'll wait until I put in the distributor and get it working before I fiddle with the carb.

I'll get another track time next week, now I'm excited!

 

Alright, I have it down between the Mallory 8548201C dist and the Accel 59107 dist. I'll have one of the two in my hands by Friday.

I'll also be buying a timing light. Thanks for the tip on where to set the initial timing. How/where should I set the vacuum advance and the mechanical advance? I know that everything will need to be fine tuned, but I'm just looking for a ballpark number to get rolling.

Thanks again.

 

OMG, i would be embaressed if my evoluzione went an 18.2 @18.5mph.. haha your ET was barely higher than your MPH.. HAHA.. but anyway, you can be a capable race car with the edelbrock.. my first motor i built was a 383 topped with a 800cfm edelbrock.. my first run ever on slicks i went 12.7 with a crappy 1.8xx 60ft. and a miss-shift to 4th.. dont be fooled when people tell you its crap.. i now run a demon 750 on my rebuilt 385(had to bore it out since i blew it up).. people tell me that demon sucks but i've also heard that people are running some nice numbers with demon as well.. i would say, get the carb rebuild, and get a tuning kit as well.. with a good tune, that 350 will sing like a bird.. and if you dont have the choke hooked up, take it off.. completely off.. that could be a problem because when its not hooked up to power, it can be moved very very easily and could close off the primary venturies and make the car run like crap.. hook it up or take it off..


nice car btw..

 

Lol, I know it was slow, but the 18.5 was actually my dial in, not my mph, since I was bracket racing. I broke out pretty bad, since my car ran a little better after adjusting the tranny. I slammed on the brakes at the finish line, and got my mph down to around 39, but I still broke out big time.

Anyway, back to the distributor. I bought the accel distributor tonight, and went to put it in, but lo and behold, I have a Mallory UniLite already. It doesn't have vacuum advance, but it does have mechanical advance. It also isn't computer controlled.

I'm gonna hold off on the distributor swap until I hear some advice- isn't vacuum advance only for cruising and idle?

Maybe I'll do the carb instead tonight.

 

Yea, vacuum advance is for cruising mostly. So if it's a drag only car, it's ok to not have vac advance. ie, trailored to the strip.
If you're driving it on the road and don't enjoy changing your plugs at your frequent fill ups, its a good idea to have it.
It shouldn't effect your power though, so you can put it on the back burner for now.

 

Hmmm. So I'll just go back to my previous assumption- that it just needs tuning. I rebuilt the carb today, although I don't think it'll do much- all the gaskets and seals looked good when I was down there. I also completely removed the choke plate, since I've already grown accustomed to not using it. I guess I'll try leaning out the secondaries and possibly experimenting with the ignition advance.

I know that I'm running rich somewhere in the powerband, because the of three factors- 1. the exhaust smells overly "gassy", even with the cat- it even makes the garage smell like gas is leaking. 2. I passed all emissions tests except for carbon monoxide, which were 5 times the legal amount- this usually indicates rich from what I read. 3. The poor performance (although I guess that could be lean as well).

I have the accel distributor in my garage and a timing light that doesn't do advance/retard. I may exchange the dist. and crappy timing light for a good timing light tomorrow. I'm glad I bought locally- I was very close to buying online, and that would have been a headache.

I think I want to hang on to the unilite- I really like how it uses optical pickup vs magnetic or hall effect- it makes me more confident that it won't fall out of tune.

 

Any updates? And once you get the fuel delivery and ignition problems sorted out, you still may not find your lost power. Like others said, its likely a combination of mistakes... Running that poorly, with an inability to rev beyond 3000RPM, and running rich are all strong indicators of a clogged catalytic converter.

 

I dropped it off at a local race shop yesterday to get a professional opinion. They'll let me know Monday what the culprit is. That'd be great if it was just a cat, but I'm confident in these guys, so I trust that they'll get me up and running this week.

I'll post an update when I find out!

 

Wow, "exhaust in my garage smells gasy" and " failed carbon monoxide 5 x legal limit". I always run my car in the garage. Saves money on beer!

 

Lol, well I don't turn the engine off and push it in when I get home But you're right, probably a cheap buzz!

 

Welp, got a call from the race shop- it was a combination of the timing and the tv cable.

Looks like I posted in the wrong section, hehe. All along, I was sure it was a carb problem, and all it along it had nothing to do with the carb. Oh well!

He said my base timing was close, but the advance was waaay off, which is why it couldn't go over 3k rpm. I asked him if there is anything I should upgrade (carb, dist., etc), and he told me "nope".

Sweet! Back to building the interior and the getting that body dropped and painted!

I'll hopefully have new track times this weekend to show what a simple timing adjustment will do.

In case anybody is interested, the shop was No Limit Performance in Morganville, NJ. They charged me three hours, which is right in line with what I expected, since I went in and said "I don't know whats wrong with it, but fix it!"

 

haha, if they can fix it based on that vague description, I think that's a good shop. Sadly few places know how to tune a carb, or any of this old simple stuff anymore.
I've got my fingers crossed for ya, lets see what it's actually capable of.

 

good to hear you're back up and running.. sounds like a good shop.. like sonix said, to figure out the problem with such a vague description is amazing..

 

WOOT! I want a PM with the title NEW BESTS!! when you go to the drag strip! Some times you just have to suck it up and get a professional opinion..

 

A wise man once said, "Ignition always has to be straight and operating properly before you do any carb tuning."

Glad to hear you're back on track.

 

Lol, and who was that wise man...? Good advice! The car even starts way better now that the timing is right- I just always assumed it wouldn't start easily because I don't have a choke, but now it fires right up like a normal car (thank god!)

I'm going to try to squeeze in a few runs at track tonight, but thats only if everything is perfect- I have to leave work early, hit zero traffic, and have no problems getting there in order to get 1 or 2 runs before it closes. More realisticly, I'll probably be getting some times this weekend.

 

Updates?

 

The tranny blew out in April, ironically a few days before I was going to take it to the track. I've been working on a WC T5 swap ever since, and I'm steaming mad at myself for taking so long to get it done. I have my fingers crossed for this to be the final week of the swap, but it is taking friggen forever.

I'll be sure to get some new times with it as soon as I break the clutch in (will only take a week- I'll drive it to work).

Lol, I guess that TV cable needed adjustment after all....