holley vs q-jet

You definately just opened a can of worms here. I voted for the quadrajet as the best overall carb. I have had a few cars with them, they werent performance cars but they had goof throttle response and decent power. The holley has less street manners than a quadrajet but for wide open throttle performance the holley smokes the q-jet. On a side note I had a 600 cfm edelbrock on my 455 when I first got it. The carb idled great and had good throttle response. I ended up putting a 4165 spreadbore holley on it and that woke the car up big time with horsepower but will admit the throttle response did go away. Also believe it or not gas mileage improved with the holley. Im assuming because of the small primaries.

I removed my q-jet when i first bought my car because someone had taken a tree trimmer to the firewall and just cut every wire coming out it of (well almost all of them). I put on a 650 Holley and it made it run great and i got better gas mileage, but i never had a properly working q-jet so i don't really know except that my car compared to my friends with the only difference of carb, mine kills him every time

The old Holleys I had always leaked, blew power valves, etc, but when tuned right are the best out there. Problem is they don't seem to like to hold a tune. That might all be different with the new Avengers they have.

Eddys have always been good to me, great choice for a driver.

The Q-jet stays tuned, is more driveable and doesn't drift much when the temperature changes.

The Holleys can be a royal pain to tune, keep tuned and driveability goes down with temperature change.

I see that Edelbrock is listed in the choices.

Isn't Edelbrock the only place that actually makes new Quadrajets? I could've sworn that I had an Edelbrock-built Quadrajet in my old Caprice. Alas, the car is gone, so I can't check.

You should delete Carter from the list and have Edelbrock/Carter listed as one.

I voted for this setup because I ran them on older Buick engines. I've had nothing but trouble with power valves and fuel leakage from Holley and the Q-jet drives best but because of the size difference between primary and secondary they don't come on as quick as an AFB.

My favorite was an old Rochester 4-jet...

None of that matters anymore for me. I run an old 4 jet or AFB to break in the engine and then fuel injection is retrofitted.

Rochester carbs are the only ones I have liked for that simple reason- put them in tune and they stay there. They might not be the best haul-azz performance carb out there, but they sure seem to be the most dependable and least annoying carbs for regular street use. You can purchase from most auto parts stores actual GM/Rochester carbs that have been rebuilt (often in Mexico) and are sold under the Holley name. I'd venture to guess these probably suck though. A good place to look for new old stock Quadrajets is E-Bay, where they can be obtained at a fraction of retail price, which is often a setback for many leading them to buy a much cheaper new Holley or Edelbrock carb- most of those are high CFM performance carbs that are not well suited for a car you wish to drive regularly as mentioned they don't like to stay in tune, are temperature sensitive, and will get really crappy MPG.

-UT-

I don't have mileage or driveability problems with my Carter AFBs or Edelbrock carbs, only the Holleys give me migrains.

I'm running a 625 Edelbrock on a stock 350 Olds with HEI and have no driveability problems whatsoever. I even get decent mileage with the 2004r transmission behind it!