'66 Holley Carb Question

[Paul L.]

Re: Does Anyone Say OK for Holleys?

Thanks Wayne. I will probably stick with mine. It tends to run a little rich but I understand that that is normal.

[Mike McKown]

It's NOT NORMAL for a Holley to run rich.

It's normal for a Holley to run the way you tune it. If you tune it rich, it'll run rich. I think Clem said it all. When owners see a leak, the first thing they do is start cranking the screws on the float bowls to make them stop leaking. This is what warps the main body metal. It's weak. You got a leak! Replace the gaskets or use the replacement style that doesn't shrink when the bowl goes dry. As far as the base plate warping. Same thing. Somebody has overtorqued the base to the manifold or has used several asbestos type gaskets and they bend the base over the gaskets when they over torque! All you gotta' do is follow the directions!

I have run and own about a dozen 4150 and 4160 holleys and have NEVER experienced the kind of problems with warping that I read about on this and other forums about Holleys. It could be because I am the oringinal owner of these and did not abuse the torque on the baseplate nuts or the float bowls.

Quadra-jets? They have NO throttle response at all compared to a Holley due to their very small primary venturi. Anything else I had to say about them wouldn't matter.

[Craig S.]

Re: It's NOT NORMAL for a Holley to run rich.

Mike - I too have not had any warping issues. I have a 4150 type on my 81 pickup with about 60,000 miles since I built up the engine including a square bore Weiand dual plane manifold. They only problem I have had was those current plastic hollow floats, I had one crack at a seam and half fill with gas, well, you can guess the rest. I bought the brass floats (can you believe they were cheaper....and were Holley brand) which cured that. I have switch to the newer blue gaskets that are reuseable without the gook, but I never reuse them. Actually, I find the Holley less of a pain to work on that QJ's, I hate dropping in the metering rods on those when assembling the top, and you have to epoxy the bottoms near the jets or they leak into the intake...Craig