Edelbrock Carburetor Installation and Adjustments

hi I'm Aaron within trouble-free so you get the best new carburetor well before we get started let's make sure you get the right size carburetor for your engine we wouldn't want to take in 850 and put it on say a 289 or 302 Ford and we probably wouldn't want to take a 500 CFM and put it on like a 502 Chevy if you've got a stock to mildly modified engine that's less than 350 cubic inches one of our 500 CFM carb endures work really good if you've got 350 or even on up to 454 cubes or 600 CFM carb endures work really well or 750 s and larger carburetors those are really designed for highly modified larger cubic inch engines for real performance use now an unfortunate thing is a lot of people tend to over carburetor engines and what that results in is a doggie engine on poor gas mileage and really bad throttle response we want to help you avoid that let's look at some items that you might need that you might not thought of first we'll start off with fuel filters this one right here fits both fuel lines about 5/16 and 3/8 it's handy we also have a universal fuel line kit and what's in here is some basic fuel line a fuel fittings and hose clamps so just a nice all-around general kit for your install if you really want something fancy we do have nice chrome steel fuel lines with a really nice anodized fuel for use in braided steel line this is the kit to get we also have a braided steel line kit that you can purchase this one right here go connects from the fuel pump right on up to your fuel line item to have for those of you that like Chrome we have the chrome fuel filter and this is also for braided steel line and for those of you that are installing on a General Motors vehicle we have this really nice chrome bracket here what this is for is the kickdown cable and your throttle cable we also have the kickdown lever for the ford applications and for Chrysler applications helps make sure your install much easier a lot of cars have air conditioning when you have air conditioning idle stopped solenoid kit that we sell if you're going to replace the carburetor it's a good idea to replace your idle stop solenoid to at the same time also when you're installing on a General Motors vehicle like an early vehicle a lot of those are Quadrajet carburetor Xand if you're replacing a Quadrajet carburetor with one of our Edelbrock carburetors you want to be sure to get our adapter plate to go from a square bore to a quarter jet manifold now another item to consider would be one of our signature of fender covers this is protects your paint from getting scratched or chipped while you're working on the car now as far as tools go for a carburetor installation pretty basic all you really need is a just a typical ratchet with an extension and a half inch socket of course you're going to need a couple of screwdrivers for doing the adjusting and tuning standard size and maybe a small one also a gasket scraper might come in handy that's only if you got the gasket that stuck to the manifold if you have a little carbon on the old manifold that you want to get off and a nut driver comes in handy for tightening and loosening hose clamps of course you can use a screw driver for that also but a nut driver just ensures that it doesn't slip off the hose clamp and get you right in the knuckle before we get started let's get familiar with some of the features and parts of the carburetor this is your typical 1406 600 CFM carburetor we can tell that because right up front here there is a 1406 right in the corner here what that tells us is the part number we can look that up and that'll tell us what size the carburetor is this is a 600 CFM with an electric choke so we're just going to kind of go around a carbon here and see everything there the throttle linkage over here this will hook to your throttle cable or your throttle assembly in the car is the idle speed screw right here for your normal idle setting up underneath here we have the high speed idle screw and what that's for setting the high speed like in the choke in the morning when it's when it's running fast in the morning to warm the vehicle up that's what this suggests we come back to the front we have the air fuel mixture screws right here and what these control is one side of the carburetor and the other side of the carburetor of the air fuel ratio only at an idle do these control anything above an idle these don't work anymore but this is what controls the air fuel mixture going into the motor just in an idle the big port and center right here is a manifold vacuum signal for your PCV valve we'd like to put it on the front of the carburetor here so it has easy access we do have a also a manifold vacuum port on the back of the carburetor we also supply it with a plug for this but this is also for like power brakes or anything like that we don't recommend the back being used for PCV valve we'd rather have you use the front so if you're only going to use a PCV valve we'll go ahead and plug this off go back into the front we also have two other vacuum ports on the front this is a little bit slightly higher than this if you see the the height difference this one's up a little bit this one's above the throttle plates and what that means is this is ported or what sometimes it's called timed vacuum most distributor vacuum advances use ported or timed vacuum so most of you would be plugging your distributor if you use a vacuum advance into this port right here this one right over here is manifold vacuum this would be used for your automatic transmission to go down to your modulator valve if you don't have an automatic transmission a lot of times that'll get plugged off well come over to this side here this is the electric choke assembly and of course there's two electric fittings on there one's a positive and one's a native which is just to ground and then we have the fuel line this is where the fuel Inlet goes right here so you take your fuel line plug it on there that comes from your fuel pump now this one comes straight out we supply a straight fitting with most of our carburetors we do offer what we call a banjo fitting this is a 90 degree banjo fitting and what this does instead of the fuel line coming straight off it'll come also down so you can route your fuel line up in a different way we just offer unique things like this for different applications now also included with your carburetor should be a little plastic bag and inside the bag should be an owner's manual and this owner's manual has all kinds of tuning tips and calibration and pretty much all the information you need to know about your carburetor now mind you our carburetor is pretty much don't need anything right out of the box they fit most applications and need minimal to no tuning at all but just in case for performance reasons down the road or extra tuning that you want to do all the information is inside the owner's manual also included in that same little bag we have some vacuum fittings down here in case you've got a tee off and go to other vacuum accessories we have a plug in them in the back a quarter inch pipe plug that's for the back of the car if you don't need that vacuum port go ahead and plug it off we also have some vacuum plugs for the front if you don't have an automatic transmission or you don't have vacuum advance you can plug the vacuum ports off in the front being that's an electric choke we supply you with a wire the ground wire and a hot lead to activate the electric choke of course we also give you the ball linkage right here to go on your throttle linkage to hookup to certain types of throttle cables and throttle linkages and then we also include the gaskets we give you one for the top of the carb air and one for the baseplate for mounting and then last but not least we give you the little stud right here for your air cleaner I need you to just cut this to size and put your air cleaner on our carpenters for the most part come out of the box ready to go with little to no adjustment needed but sometimes you run into applications where you do want some fine-tuning and calibrating and for that we have a calibration kit and this comes with all the necessary metering rods jets and springs gives you a chart up on top to see what Springs and what metering rods and jets you can use and of course inside we have the metering rods and springs and jets and if you look in your owners manual open this up they give you charts inside here to show you which jets to use and which metering rods so it's really simple so when you're trying to do this kind of stuff just refer to your owners manual and we have lots of information in there just on this all right now we're getting ready to take the old carburetor off before we do that though there's a few things you probably know first thing is do it when the engines cold if you do it when the engines hot you're just going to burn your fingers and risk the chance of like dropping apart or dropping a tool and that's no fun second thing is you're going to need a couple little items before you start and first thing would be get some tape some masking tape like this and a Sharpie pen this way you can mark vacuum lines and fuel lines to remember which ones went where second thing is when you undo the fuel line there's a chance that fuel might drain out of the tank so if you have a neoprene line or a rubber line you're gonna want to get these little items like these is it called plugs --is and this will just stick right in the fuel line and that way the fuel can't just drain out if you don't have any plugs it's you can use a wooden dowel or even a center punch like this just to prevent the fuel from coming out for a little while now some of you're going to have cars that have vacuum advanced distributors and before you start you're gonna want to know if your vacuum advanced uses ported vacuum or what they also call time vacuum or manifold vacuum most of them used ported vacuum but you want to be sure and a quick way to tell before we start just briefly start the engine up just for a few seconds come down to find the vacuum hose that goes to your distributor pull it off and stick your finger over it now if it's manifold vacuum it's gonna have a pretty good vacuum signal they're actually suck your finger on there you'll actually feel it if it's ported vacuum or a timed vacuum you'll barely feel a little bit of suction there but that'll let you know what port on your new carbon you're going to plug your vacuum advance in to make sure that when you're checking for the signal for your vacuum advance that the engines either warmed up or that the choke is open so you don't get a false vacuum reading okay we're going to start by removing the fuel line you got to be careful though sometimes the mechanical fuel pumps will hold pressure in a line even if the motor hasn't been run for a while so we take a nut driver pull this off and keep a rag handy we have a rag right here sometimes fuel will go places that you don't want it to go and just kind of wrap it over if it's got fuel pressure in line it could squirt out so just be careful with that pull this off and if fuel starts to come out you stick a little plugs it in there all right now we need to disconnect the vacuum lines and all the other outer goodies on the carburetor so I'll take the PCV line off and our back in advance line next we'll take the throttle linkage and spring off okay now we just connect the choke linkage just by removing a little clip now keep in mind with little Clips like this and washers and nuts and bolts if you're taking a clip off or you have four nuts and four bolts or four washers and all of a sudden you have three find it make sure it did not go down the carburetor or anywhere in in and the orifices around the car because it'll go inside the motor and you'll have motor damaged all right next we remove the mounting bolts alright next we'll go ahead and take the carburetor off the intake manifold just pull straight up on it and again be careful that nothing drops down the intake manifold or you can have serious engine damage pull the gasket off and there's the intake manifold okay now we're gonna remove the choke assembly now this is what they call a divorce choke the carburetor were going to put on has an electric choke so it's all self-contained divorce choke just means it uses manifold temperature to activate the choke assembly of course we're not going to need this anymore now some cars use exhaust gas to activate the choke and for those we have block off plates specifically designed for different manifolds okay next we remove the studs vice grips come in handy for that all right now that those are out we're gonna look at the gasket surface here now the key to not having vacuum leaks one of them is a very clean gasket surface if we look down here real close you can see old gasket material put on here it's still stuck we need to get all that off and as well as the carbon that's along here or we're surely gonna have a vacuum leak and the cars not gonna run right what we're gonna do to remove the gas material is use a gasket scraper and some rags we don't want any of this material going down inside the engine so we just take some rags and stuff them down in here that prevents any gasket material or carbon or anything like that to get down and cause any damage inside the engine next we use a little bit of carburetor cleaner just to clean the surface any excess dirt or grease all right now we're ready to install our new carburetor I want you to take note of something first though Edelbrock carburetors are what they call a square bore carburetor what we took off was a Quadrajet carburetor which is a spread bore if we try and just install our new carburetor with just a standard gasket you can see clearly right here we're going to have vacuum problems and that this gasket does not fit this intake manifold so we're going to use is an adapter plate this right here adapts square bore carburetors to Quadrajet manifolds and without this you're gonna have nothing but trouble you can have all kinds of vacuum leaks just so you know what a square bore manifold looks like in case you do have one they look like this and of course the gasket fits very nicely now our adapter kits come complete they come with the adapter plate the necessary gaskets and all the mounting hardware we're gonna go ahead and put this on start with the gasket and of course this has got to go down on the correct way in the manifold we're going to install the mounting screws when you're tightening these don't cinch one down and then the others just snug them up a little bit first and then go around to each one and just give it a little tighter and a little tighter and show us nice and snug all right next we're gonna install the four mounting studs now we install the top gasket and we're ready to drop the carburetor on but before you do just kind of give it a once-over make sure there's no packing debris inside or anything like that and take note that there's a vacuum port on the backside now the front side is for the PCV valve the back side is for power brakes now our car here uses power brakes coming off the intake manifold so we're not going to be using this port you want to be sure you blocked it off you're going to have a huge vacuum leak included with the carburetor you get bag with all kinds of little parts in it and included in the parts is the plug for this back port here I've put a little thread sealer on there once that's done we're ready to drop it on now we're ready to install the washers and the nuts once those are all along we're getting a snug down with a wrench and again don't just cinch down on one and not the others just go around evenly and give them all a little bit of hand tightness sometimes it's a good idea to go in a cross pattern and just a little tighter each time until they're snug down now the carburetors on we're ready to do the fuel lines well the first thing we want to do is get rid of the old fuel line they get all dry and cracked and you're just asking for a leak so I'm going to get rid of that first now to help make your installation go smooth and easy we offer a universal fuel line kit it's a part number 80 135 and what comes in this kit is a fuel filter we have the rubber fuel line we have two different size ferrule fittings to go onto your existing steel line coming from your fuel pump we have a 5/16 and a 3/8 and of course all the hose clamps that you'll need we do offer a filter with two different size of nipples on it for 5/16 or 3/8 now the trick is you don't want to try and take a 5/16 fuel line and shove it on the carburetor and as a car as you can and try and get it on there all you're doing is ballooning this out you're just asking for a fuel leak fuel leak and a hot exhaust don't mix real good you asking for a barbecue so make sure you're using the right size fuel lines for your vehicle now this car is equipped with a 3/8 steel fuel line coming from the fuel pump so we selected a 3/8 ferrule fitting that's supplied in the kit and basically these are just a nipple for the rubber fuel line to attach to and a crush sleeve inside that seals around the steel fuel line so we start by taking the nut and ferrule assembly slipping it over the steel fuel line make sure it's on good then we simply screw in the fitting and then give it a good cinch down and now to prevent any leaks now that's ready to go now our Edelbrock carburetors come with a fuel fitting comes straight out the side it's the standard equipment and we can take the fuel line and stick it on here just because we give you two or three feet of fuel line doesn't need to use all of it so let's cut it to size and we're going to do something a little more than this rather than use this fitting we offer of what we call a banjo fitting it's a 90 degree banjo fitting number eight oh eight nine and what this does is it lets us reroute the fuel line to a little better angle now what comes in the kit is a banjo fitting and a couple of gaskets so we're gonna do is place a gasket on one side put the fitting on and place the second gasket on the other side now it's ready to install and we'll just give that a little cinch you don't want to over-tighten these just good and snug is plenty fine now we'll be able to route the fuel line up underneath and straight up in so we're going to cut it to size install a new clamp put it on and give it a title I want to be sure that your fuel line doesn't interfere with any linkages over here ours goes underneath and around it doesn't interfere with anything so that's all nice and rounded really good something very important about installing a new car waiter our Edelbrock carburetors do not have built-in fuel filters some om carburetors and even some aftermarket carburetors have filters built in and I can't stress enough how important a fuel filter is you've got old rust scale and a gas tank you've got old fuel lines sometimes they rust sometimes the neoprene lines disintegrate and little pieces come out and you really need to filter that stuff out because if it gets in the carburetor it'll cause a needle and seats inside to get clogged up and if fuel won't be able to shut off and it just starts flooding all over the place so we really need to install a good fuel filter that money before we start fuel filters are directional so if you look on the end of it it is say in on one side and there's nothing on the other so let's you know that this side is the inlet so when we place it in there we want to be sure that the fuel pump is flowing this way to the carburetor so we'll come in and find a placed on the fuel line here to place this fuel filter I kind of like this spot right here now in your car you might find another location but this for our car this is a nice spot here's the inside just make sure that tucks out of the way so it doesn't interfere with any linkage or any electrical items or anything like that and everything should be good now the fuel line's taken care of we can do the vacuum lines I went ahead and replaced the vacuum advanced line because the old line is pretty cracked and we're just asking for a vacuum leak if we don't now this particular vacuum advanced uses ported or they call timed vacuum and the way we can tell that under carburetor is if you're looking at the ports on the front one is slightly higher than the other if you look at this one it's a little bit lower this one's slightly higher on the carburetor we're going to use the one that's slightly higher because that's above the throttle plates which is ported or what they call timed vacuum the other one we're not going to use now this is manifold vacuum this car right here is a manual transmission car so we don't need a vacuum line going down to the transmissions modulator valve so we're just going to plug that off well include it with your carburetors this little goodie package and it has little extra goodies in there throttle balls stud for the air cleaner and air cleaner gasket and some wire when we hook up the electric choke so we're going to take one of the vacuum line plugs we're just going to plug that one off and then we have the PCV port right here so I'm just gonna plug the PCV line in we're gonna reuse this line right here because it's fairly new now our vacuum lines are hooked up now we're ready to hook up a throttle linkage now Edelbrock carburetors are compatible with most styles of throttle linkages in with the parts bag that you get with your card reader they also include the little ball and nut and washer for the GM applications so we're gonna go ahead and install that once that's nice and snug now we can reach that bar throttle linkage in I don't want to check for full travel make sure you have a good smoothly full travel no binding or anything like that and then most importantly install a new return spring this thing is really important you want to make sure you got a good one on there all right now we're ready to hook up the electric choke now in the parts bag that comes with your carburetor you'll have a couple of wires a black one and a red one the black one is the ground and it's already set up for you with the correct Spade terminal on it so if we go down to the choke we plug this into the Spade terminal and we can just simply ground it right to the housing of the choke kernels and just take one of these out here there's our ground source now all I have to do is hook a switched 12-volt source to activate the choke now here's what you don't want to do some people tell you oh just hook it to the positive side of the coil that's not a good idea because this is basically a flat wound spring in there that heats up kind of like a direct short what you don't want to do is take that drain and put it on your ignition system now some other people say I'll hook it to the alternator you don't want to do that either really what you want to want to do is get up underneath the dash get on your fuse panel and plug into a place that says keyed accessory and that's where we're gonna take it from okay once we've hooked into the accessory side of the fuse box we run our wire up through bring it on in and plug it right in to the positive side of the choke now we've got power feed to the choke well now that everything's hooked up we're ready to fire this thing up we first need to do though is get some fuel from the fuel pump inside the carburetor so we can be able to start the motor so easiest thing to do is just crank the engine over for 10 or 15 seconds to prime the inside of the carburetor [Music] well right when it's ready to fire up it's good idea to have a buddy get inside the car so you can kind of watch the carburetor make sure you don't have any fuel leaks or anything like that right upon initial startup well that looks really good now keep in mind your Edelbrock carburetor comes right out of the box pretty much ready to go but because there's so many different types of engines out there and different applications you might need to do a little bit of extra tuning we're going to show you how to do that okay well we've already run this and check for leaks we had no fuel leaks so we went ahead and ran it got it to standard operating temperature now we're ready to adjust the air fuel mixture screws I'm going to show you that real quick that's these two screws right here one operates one side of the carburetor one operates the other now these only affect an idle anything above an idle these don't work okay so some people say I'm gonna rich it up my carburetor if you screw these out you're opening up the needle and seat inside and allowing more fuel and air to go in at an idle but it doesn't affect normal driving okay now there's two ways to adjust these when the engine is running you can adjust them by putting a screwdriver in here and screwing it in until you hear in the idle drop as soon as it starts to drop you say okay now starting to work and it's cutting the air and fuel off so you start to back it out a little bit give it about another quarter to a half a turn and you're set then do the same thing to the other now that sets on the lean side of running so if you want economy four running around town you start screw it in so you're going to go clockwise with it you're going to screw it in until the idle drops and then back it back out until you get the highest possible idle and then you're set and then do the same thing to the other now if you have a more of a performance car and you're going to want to be on the rich side then do the opposite start screwing it out first go to counterclockwise with it to allow more fuel and air in there and when it starts running rough then go back in another half turn or so and then set it and then do the same to the other side so we're gonna do that here work this is an economy car it's just a stock little 327 in here we're just gonna do it for the economy side so we'll go ahead and fire it up further there's the idol drama we're gonna back it up and to the side we hear the idle drop down we're just gonna adjust the radiator idle and we're set all right when you're done with your installation be sure to top off your new carburetor with a great-looking Edelbrock air cleaner this one right here is a model 1221 is specifically designed to fit your new carburetor of course we have other models to choose from too and you can check those out online on our website at wwlp.com if you have any other tech questions you can give our tech line a call two at one eight hundred four one six eight six two eight for additional tuning and adjusting such as changing metering rods and jets or adjusting float levels you need to take the top with the carburetor drop now the first thing you need to do is take the metering rods out into bits so we're going to put now the trick here is don't take this out all the way you can leave it in and twist it to the side I'll do that to this one over here we can pull it up and just turn this to the side and that gives us access to the metering rods inside and they just simply pull up there's a mating rod there's a metering rod here's a spring next we need to take the top of the carburetor off before we do that though we want to take Clips out of the linkage ones on this side right here for the choke and ones on this side right here for the accelerator pop pop these out then next we're gonna take the top of the carburetor off now these up here are t25 Torx bits don't try and use a Phillips screwdriver inside of here you're just gonna strip the screws out you never better get the top off and these are the screws that go all the way around the top so we're gonna start taking those out a trick is take all the screws out down the side now sometimes the top of the car beer will be stuck just give it a couple of light taps with a plastic end of a screwdriver handle and it won't damage the finish of the carburetor and it helped break that gasket loose now should lift straight up and off there we go what we have right here are the two floats and the accelerator pump so we're going to set that down and we'll look down inside here and you'll actually see the jets and the Jets there's some right down in here there's one there and there's one here and then on the opposite side of the carburetor we have the same thing because we have a left on the right side of the carburetor but those are the main Jets the Jets in the front of the carburetor for the primaries and the Jets in tahrir the carburetor for the secondaries now Justin the floats and looking at the float level you look at this area right here right between between the float and the carburetor top and what you really want to do in there is have about 7/16 of an inch and a quick way to do this just take a 7/16 inch drill bit and just kind of set it in there it should be just just there same with this side just about perfect that's what you're looking for well once you've looked in the owners manual if you want to go up or down in jet sizes and metering rods sizes and you put those in it's a simple matter of just reversing the process and putting the top of the carburetor back on just be very careful the floats you don't want to pinch anything don't force anything just set it all back on put all your screws back in now the trick is when you get most of these snug down don't just tighten one and then another just snug them gently all the way around a little more and a little more and kind of a crossing pattern so you don't warp the top of the carburetor now we're ready to go all right so the next step is you're gonna reattach the linkages and reattach the clips all right now we're ready for it to put the metering rods back in sugar put the springs in first just push these down very lightly and slide the covers back over now the trick is with these don't over tighten these when you put them back on they don't need to be cinched that tight just 1012 inch pounds is all you need just a little snug same with this one we'll drop it in and the Carver's back together all right one of the last final adjustment you might need to do two carburetors adjust the electric choke I'm show you how to do that it's real simple it has three screws on the outside of the housing all you want to do is just loosen those you don't need to take them all the way out if you look on the outside of the housing right here it says lean and there's an arrow pointing this direction so if we turn to lean it it's gonna open the choke we see the choke plate right here opening and closing now I'm gonna rich in it and lean it well obviously if it said in the position right there it's not going to be working on a cold morning so you want to close it up get it to a point where it has just some pretty good spring tension on it if we do it not enough it's easy to open in fact it doesn't even close all the way we want to give it where it's got some good spring tension you obviously don't want to crank it because the thing I'll never open or take forever for it to open so you want a good ample amount of spring tension on it once you have that just give it a cinch down okay once that's done we can adjust the fast idle screw we have the main idle screw right here and up underneath is the fast idle screw and this adjusts the idle speed for when the choke is on so if you want a little more idle you can crank it up a little bit if you want a little less just back it back out and that will control your fast idle

Channel: Auto Shop Videos

Views: 439,349

Keywords: how to adjust an Edelbrock carb, Edelbrock carb adjustment, Edelbrock carb installation, how to install edelbrock carb, bad ass cars, arron johnson, edelbrock, carb adjusting, auto shop videos

Id: bcavX5cTDbY

Length: 37min 33sec (2253 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2015