Thread: what carb would you reccomend?

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building a 51 f1 for my dad, its all ford, 302/aod wirh a granada rearend. the 302/aod combo was bought from a neighbor who got it from a local salvage yard. its tagged as 1983 motor, but pretty sure its probably 1987 or newer, has a tbi setup. ive been told i can switch to carb setup? i have a performer intake with a 650 elderbrock. anyone have any thoughts on if this will work with my engine trans combo, (this is my first ford build)? ive been told its to much carb from a couple buddies (not ford guys). were not building anything radical, its just a truck for my 80 year old father. 302/aod with if i remember right some where like a 270:1 rear gear?

Thanks for any info!

It can be made to work, but you will have to do some playing around with jetting and metering rods. Better yet and for that kind of use, OD transmission, really low differential ratio(maybe a 2.79 which is a usual Ford 8" ratio) wont give you a very good volumetric ratio plus lousy performance and gas mileage. That means the air entering the carb is really moving too slow to properly atomize the fuel. You really only need about a 450 cfm carb for a generally stock engine, but a Performer 1403 or 1404, 500cfm will work better then the 650cfm

Switching to a carb from a TBI engine is not as easy as swapping intakes. You need an electric fuel pump or will have to swap the entire front of the engine (timing housing, water pump, add a cam eccentric, maybe pulleys, brackets, maybe a distributor plus possibly a few other things) from a carbed engine.

The engine in my AVATAR car, a MPI 5.0L Ford engine, 1999 manufacture, with a fairly radical cam and head setup, converted to the early front with mechanical fuel pump and it runs fine with the 600cfm, but only after a fair amount of tuning

thanks for the insight, i was afraid that wouldn't be that easy. i'll probably look for another motor combo do to my time contraints, my old man turns 80 in a month and half so gots to get moving.

Thanks Again!

You could almost get away with the 650 but the rear gears are going to kill it. Back when mine had 3.25 gears and stock converter it would foul the plugs if I used OD under about 65 mph with a 600 carb. Not a problem now with the 4.11's.