Holley or Edelbrock Carb

Whats the deal with all the cars I see with Holley's and just a few with edelbrock carbs? I mean did I choose the wrong carb or something?

I've always heard an edelbrock will take more abuse than a holley and thats all I know!!

Please someone shed some light on this for me so I can choose my next carb whenever I decide to build another motor!

Oh and has anyone ever heard of piston rings not seating after 5000 miles? Because thats what mine are doing in a .30 over 350 chevy, rods installed in order, new pistons, lifters, cam, crank, oil pump, you name it, and the compression test with heavy weight oil tells me its the rings soooo .. am I just very unlucky or is this a sometimes common issue?

It mostly boils down to preference. The eddy is an old 60's Carter design whereas the Holley has made a few changes since then. I like the eddy for a pure street carb where the Holley is my preference for street/strip or pure strip.

Nothing beats the Holley HP's for all out performance.

For what it's worth, I've seen issues with the Holley carbs due to floats sticking. This occurance has been on new out of the box units; I understand there is a "repair kit" to corrects this known issue, but why would someone want to buy a new carb and then have to buy a repair kit it make it work? The Edelbrock carbs I've used have worked the first time right out of the box and continue to do so years later.

It all depends on what your building. Im a holley guy, both will work when properly selected for the aplication and then tuned. **)

Generally, a Holley will win on race day, but the Edelbrock will get you home from the track. That seems to be the general concensus. Plus, Edelbrocks require less fiddling, and work pretty much out of the box.

I ran 2 Edelbrocks on my '27, day in day out for 7 years, in pouring rain, etc. THey never missed a beat. Have had one on my Jeep 5.0 for 4 years, same experience.

Don

As has been said this is a personal preference issue similar to Ford vs Chevy, but in the last couple of months I've seen some posts on this board from people who have had hesitation/bog problems with thier Eddy's right out of the box. That normally relates to metering rod, float adjustment, and/or accelerator pump problems. I'm not real fond of having to pull the air horn off to adjust floats, something you don't have to do with a Holley and changing sizes of metering rods is also something you don't have to do with a Holley. Eddy's are good carbs when tuned properly, but IMHO Holley's are easier to work with as long as you don't over carb a mild street engine.

its whatever works for you. I personally prefer Holley carbs over Edelbrocks. Edelbrock carbs do seem to be more forgiving when not tuned... meaning they will still run decent. Although that doesnt mean its right.
A Holley generally will run like crap if its out of adjustment. I have just had to many bad experiances with Edelbrock carbs.

the eddys- afb - carters are a good carbs and they do not like to much fuel psi .yes you have to take the top off the carb to get at the floats. but one "GASKET " this is great and move two caps on the rod towers and you can set up your fuel mix with your rods or your spring setup in less than minutes. HOLLEY are good but many gasket and they allways do not come off in one pice the holleys main body look like it could make more CFm flow and the eddy as alot of spots that do not look very smooth for air flow but they do work good have used both and fix many holleys but for a mild use or for twos4 on blowers the eddys shine if i want to go fast i use 4500 holleys hey why dont eddy remake the carter thermoquad? i used them and like them but they where hard to get jets and parts. but i think it was a geat carb:whacked:

It truely is a fordVsChevy kinda issue, i love my holleys, never had a major problem and love that they are essentially infinitely adjustable, where as the edelbrock carbs i dont believe are, im the only one out of my friends to run a holley, and have helped them try and tune their edelbrocks but i could just never find that sweet spot without adjusting metering rods, but they are alot more forgiving for street use, especially when it comes to backfires :)
Steven

afbs. eddys. carters .will still work with a pile of junk in the bowls. i had two i had to scrape out the junk and rebuild for a customer and they work? water sat in them so long that it ate big pits in the bowls . holleys i do not think if that bad would have been saved

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Originally Posted by pat mccarthy

afbs. eddys. carters .will still work with a pile of junk in the bowls. i had two i had to scrape out the junk and rebuild for a customer and they work? water sat in them so long that it ate big pits in the bowls . holleys i do not think if that bad would have been saved

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I think Pat has hit the crux of it. The Edelbrock/AFB/Carter design just seems to handle dirt and abuse a little better, maybe making them better for the average street driven car. Before we put the tripower on my one Sons 455 Olds convert, he had an aluminum hi-rise with a Holley 750 on it. He was constantly breaking down, and every time it was some very small piece of dirt in the carb. Pulled it off and put the trips on it, problem gone.

This may be an over simplification, and boils down to personal preference too, but from conversations I have had with rodders at shows and runs, this seems to be the general opinion. Now if I were building a drag car, I think the Holley would get the nod.


Don

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Originally Posted by DennyW

Maybe not, but you can buy the Holley bowls cheap. :LOL: :LOL:

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yes and metering blocks to? :3dSMILE: and do not forget the hand full of gaskets:eek: holleys do not like dirt:whacked: i have used holleys but i fell out of love with them way to much stuff to buy for them GASKETS. but i have a 4500 9377 that works good and have had one for over 15 years

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Originally Posted by DennyW

You just got to use the anti-stick on the gaskets. And, a good filter. My little 390 cfm on my Bronco II has been on there since 1991. I've never had to tear it down and clean it. :LOL: :LOL: All the carbs have there draw backs. You just have to know them well.

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oh i do. but like i said way to many gaskets for way to many makes yes i know all about the no sticky gaskets. holley did not used them and it is fun for the first times getting them apart with the stock sticky ones i have mill the main bodys flat mill chocke horns off turned a dual feed out of a single feeds and have made a single pumper to a double pumper and done just about any thing you can do to a holley for me and for my customers. i do not like the price and the quality you get for it and buy jets gaskets power valves or power plugs and for $50 later you may have something that may work better that aQ jet or a carter or maybe not? like i said i use a 4500 holley and have had one for many moons but i do not like keeping $100 of holley stuff to do a 20 dollar job

i will not post on this any more why? has any one paid over $770. for a HP holley and this junk out of the box dents in the main body? had to mill it rework it .what did holley do for me??? one set of gaskets hey denny they sent me sticky ones:mad:

you can do a lot more with the Eddy's than the Holley's if you know how. a 40.00 kit of rods and springs and you can make it do anything. almost that is. :eek: :cool:

I didn't want to say that, I thought I had the only carb. that could talk, and nobody would believe me.:eek: :whacked:

or wet your plugs. :LOL: **)

mine can whistle a tune sometimes. :toocool:

Hey, what about the Predators doesn't anybody care about those?

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Originally Posted by Gerald Streeks

Hey, what about the Predators doesn't anybody care about those?

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never ran one on the st., but used them on my drag car and mod. round track. worked great. :cool:

I am throwing down and buying a pair of Eddys to replace my Holley 390's. The car was idling weird when I was warming her up just now. I shut if off, took off the scoop and air cleaners, checked vacuum lines, checked the chokes (one of the butterflies had stuck closed a couple of weeks ago), everything looked good.

Fired it up, dropped it into reverse, and BOOM!! Engine dies, backfire and flames. Big flames.

Screw this.

When Holleys run right, they run killer. I LOVE mine when they run right. But they have no sense of humor. I'm getting a pair of Eddy 1403's when I get my bonus check this month.

I just went today and bought a edlebrock,gonna put it on tonight after i put my fresh built heads on, hope it works out of the box like they claim

I dont think any carb will work perfectly 'out of the box', mainly because all engines are a little different. Even two engines, built identically, will need to be tuned a little differently. But your Eddy should be OK as is...if anything, you might have to adjust the idle mixture screws a bit (read instructions), but otherwise it should be OK. Which one did you get?

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Originally Posted by Crowbie

Whats the deal with all the cars I see with Holley's and just a few with edelbrock carbs? I mean did I choose the wrong carb or something?

I've always heard an edelbrock will take more abuse than a holley and thats all I know!!

Please someone shed some light on this for me so I can choose my next carb whenever I decide to build another motor!

Oh and has anyone ever heard of piston rings not seating after 5000 miles? Because thats what mine are doing in a .30 over 350 chevy, rods installed in order, new pistons, lifters, cam, crank, oil pump, you name it, and the compression test with heavy weight oil tells me its the rings soooo .. am I just very unlucky or is this a sometimes common issue?

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The 'Brock vs. Holley is IMHO part preference and part application. As mentioned before, typically Edelbrocks are not really the racer's choice. I probably wouldn't choose an Edelbrock carb if I was going to race the car I was putting it in. Hell, even Vic Edelbrock doesn't run an Edelbrock carb on his old Mustang GT-500. So, in that case, (racing) if my only choices were Edelbrock or Holley I'd go with a Holley. But, that doesn't mean the Edelbrocks aren't good carbs. For a daily driver, between the two I'd personally take the Holley....and throw it as far as I could and then install an Edelbrock EVERY time.

I prefer installing carbs, tuning them ONCE and then forgetting about them......forever. I NEVER had that luxury with the Holley's I've owned. They seemed to be a constant pain in the a**. The Edelbrocks I have installed have been a quick easy tune right out of the box, change the jets here, or metering rods there, and then I never had to touch them again...just the way I like it.

Perhaps it's just simply because I really suck at tuning a Holley carb, if that's the case, I'm fine with it. I'll accept it as a limitation of mine and move on. (I'm not a plumber either...that's another one I have just accepted as fact) I've always seemed to be able to get the Holley's to produce good power...they just seemed to lose their tune to often for me.

Now, in fairness, to put some perspective to this last statement so that it doesn't sound more conclusive than it actually is, I've only personally owned 3 Holleys and 2 Edelbrocks. I have installed and tuned a handful of both for other people as well, but really couldn't tell you how well any of them are running nowadays.

So thats about it from me on the whole Edelbrock vs. Holley thing.

As for the ring seating question after 5K miles, how was the motor broke in after it was rebuilt? Is it "blowing by" through the carb, or ???? In other words, what was the actual condition that prompted you to put a compression tester on it to begin with?

Cheers,
Firechicken

In any case, unless you are building a freak beast engine, the carb you put on it, if properly sized for your engine's output, will probably be pretty close right out of the box! Think about how many people really read plugs and make jet edjustments etc on their carbs on the street. Usually you don't need to, and if there really are problems, in general they are often really not the poor carb's fault anyway, Holley, Edelbrock or other **) **) **)

That said, for this post I say Holley rules :p

Kitz

Well i got it all together, it started right up woo hoo, seems to run fine, but then again like denny stated, i dont know anything about carb tuning, i did not check the model #, but it is a 600cfm

I've had some experience of Holleys and am quite new to Edelbrocks.
Best Holley I've had was custom built for my Chevy 454 by Chuck Nuytten out of Dallas. 750 double-pumper, choke horn removed, airflow improved to 890cfm max, 4-corner idle, etc. Ran great right off, never needed to touch it, except tweak up the bowl screws once in a while. I may change the power valve soon, and I'm not looking forward to messing with scraping old gaskets off etc.
Have just fitted my first Edelbrock to a Ford 351C, and after reading the instructions, decided to richen it up a stage or two on cruise and power. This was achieved by a simple rod change in under 5 minutes, not a drop of fuel was spilt - impressed the hell out of me!
Chris

all i can say is go to the track u might find 1 or 2 eddy's <the street cars. vs the rest holleys or proforms, predators etc

So . . . whadda ya think about running a 600 cfm smog Holley - w/vacuum secondaries - on the rear of a dual quad setup along with an Edelbrock 750 cfm on the front?

Progressive linkage with the rear carb - Holley - as the primary.

Best of both worlds for street use and measurements show it's a do-able deal.

that would be a pain in the a*s to keep in tune.