How to Choose the Correct Spacer

when trying to cure heat soak in a carburetor one of the most popular options is to use a heat insulating spacer but obviously they're not all created equal there are some that work better on other intake manifolds and some that don't so let's talk about which one's best for you so heat soak is a very common problem on aftermarket carburetors especially the aluminum bodied stuff because it absorbs heat very well in aluminum transfers heat very well so if you've got an aluminum intake manifold or if you've got an a steel manifold and an aluminum based carburetor it will accept heat very easily and that's where spacers come in we've talked about this quite a bit over the years definitely talked about the different types of ways you can help cure that I did a whole video on how how you can uh help cure the the heat soak problem on carburetors and the spacers are the best way to do that but they're not all the same they're not all uh designed to work uh universally so you have to kind of match these up a little bit now obviously they are specific this one is for a quadr jet style carburetor so it's obviously very unique to that design Quadra jet bolts right onto it and it generally follows the intake manifold and the holes that are there for that manifold but what do you do with an aftermarket manifold like a performer the performer RPM any of the W and intakes doesn't matter what what it is they all have their way of delivering the fuel and air mixture down into the runner and down into the cylinder head so we need to talk a little bit about that because like I say there is some reasons why you wouldn't use one of these over the other so let's do this let me get a couple of intake manifolds up here on the bench and we'll show you what the differences are in between them before we get started on that let's talk about these uh adapters that go from a spread boore style manifold so you can bolt up a square Bo style carburetor we're not talking about these these are very specific they're an adapter to go from you know that type of carburetor to that type of intake manifold but also to these are aluminum so they're going to transfer heat very very well off of a steel uh or an aluminum intake manifold whatever the case may be it will transfer it very easily up into aluminum aluminum carburetor so any aluminum spacer or adapter is not a good way to block heat so these we're not talking about it's just the regular spacers so just want to point that out before we get any further into the video now one thing this doesn't really pertain to is these quarter inch thick uh heat insulator gaskets got little grommets in it uh they just aren't that big of a consideration there's not enough uh surface area thickness to it to affect the air flow going through there which is really what we're talking about here when we talk about matching up uh the SPAC or the intake so when you're talking about these don't worry about it you can use them on either style intake take now let's talk about the spacers obviously if you've watched my video on uh on curing heat soak I am a very big fan of these wood laminate spacers I do believe they block the heat a little bit better than say the phenolic plastic uh that is just uh my estimation my guesstimation of things uh there may be some scientific uh uh ways to back that or refute that but anyway I do prefer the wood laminate we talk about but for this uh discussion really doesn't matter now on to the spacers obviously with an open Plum style that will go right on an open Plum style intake and that's what it's designed to do space itself off the intake manifold help block the heat open plenum so the fuel and air mixture flows through there the same way I don't like these really low profile the one by Wan the torker by edel Brock they're really not that good of intake manifolds but what they are good for is keeping the under uh uh Hood clearance down especially on Corvettes so guys suffer big time for not having enough space under hood but that's the way that's designed to go now I don't have the regular split Runner uh spacer but I do have this Four Hole one and if that's all you have you can run that on a performer style intake manifold which is what this one is for a small block forward now here's where we get into an area where things become a little more complicated if you use that open style spacer on a split or a stock style intake manifold the rule of thought is is that does not work very well the carburetor tends to mix the fuel and air uh coming through there it it doesn't find the right pathway as easy and running a split or a four hole on a factory style or on a that type of manifold that has those is the best way to do it the thought is is just that uneven air and fuel distribution which I can certainly see I I don't have any way to prove that the only way we could prove that is to bolt something on top of it and not run you know probably uh Fuel and air through but you could use like a smoke machine and push that through there and see what the volume is or at least visual the volume coming out of the the runner so maybe that would be a way to test it but the other side of that is from what the experts say is that we will tend to pull or puddle uh fuel at the bottom of the uh the manifold there but honestly I think that's probably more for a stock style intake manifold these aftermarket ones I don't know I have run a open spacer on this type of manifold over and over and over again and I haven't really noticed any loss of throttle response now also the thought being that if you run a regular for hole or a split spacer on there that you will have better throttle response I don't know that I have ever experienced that feeling but that's all that is there's really no way to measure that you could AFR that and just see if there's any variance between these two but boy that would be such a small number I don't know that you'd come up with anything at least for the hundreds of hours that I have staring at an AFR gauge with stuff like this I don't know that that would make such an impact if the carburetor is tuned really well I don't know that it makes that big of a difference so really could you run that spacer on both intake manifolds I say yes you can I've done it again thousands of times never had any issues with it uh could you run just a regular Four Hole spacer on on an open Plum type intake sure I don't think that that has probably any effect on it at all uh the thought process being that when you run it on that style of intake manifold or or a stock intake that has uh those very divided runners in it that it will enhance that uh lowend torque and maybe you'd enhance a little bit of it but again we're talking if it's one foot-pound of torque that that thing would enhance I don't know that you'd ever feel that or notice that you certainly wouldn't notice it if you took it away so it's just it's kind of six or one half a dozen other but when it comes down to if this was a stock intake manifold and you were bolting on an adapter to be able to adapt a spread boore style pad uh to a square board style carburetor then absolutely if you're going to run a heat blocking spacer and absolutely recommend that you do so use the correct spacer in this case run the four hole that way everything lines up with it you don't lose any of that Effectiveness with it if you were to run a open plenum then you can see where you can kind of run into some issues here fuel air kind of hits those and doesn't really follow that nice clean path down do into the uh uh intake manifold and into the runner down into the cylinder head so if you're going to run a spacer on a stock intake run that Four Hole uh uh adapter or spacer to to block the heat it'll absolutely work much better now on the 2101 performer intake pictured here you cannot run this Four Hole divided or this open spacer with it onto that intake manifold because it will leak what you'll need need is the uh adapter plate and I'll leave the part numbers to all of this stuff down in the description so you can find it but first you need to seal up the intake first and then you can run uh the spacer that you want one last little thing that we've obviously talked about quite a bit in the past but when you're talking about uh spacers to block heat run the thickest one you can now typically the inch uh ones you can run on most everything but like on the GMC where I've got a lot of room under hood I could run this 2-in one very easily and and uh really help isolate the carburetor from the heat source which is the engine uh so don't worry about it you know people you'll hear people argue well you're going to you know you'll gain velocity and you'll you'll get a lot more topend power if you run that bigger two 2in baser probably but again you're going to feel a two three horsepower four horsepower change at 6,500 RPM probably not so I wouldn't worry too much about that concentrate on what the design of the product is supposed to do and that's uh block the heat from reaching the carburetor so just one last little tip on that run the thickest one you can so I think that covers pretty much everything at this point just be careful like I say when you're when you're trying to match up the intake manifold with the spacer uh just match it up with the correct one sometimes that means the the open plenum uh sometimes it's a four hole sometimes it's a regular divided one whichever one fits best but in the worst case scenario where you just need it to work for a little bit of time on an aftermarket intake manifold that open hole spacer will work just fine until you can get the correct one on there so I wouldn't worry too much about it really the big benefit is blocking the heat from the engine to the carburetor so if I forgot anything uh if I should have included any more information leave it in the comments down below happy to answer any of those questions and certainly if you've got any other questions on fitment uh don't hesitate again I'll leave all this stuff Linked In the description so you can find it there so that's uh what we got today and uh hopefully you learn something and hopefully uh uh help you figure out your project so anyway I we'll talk to you guys on the next one we'll see you

Channel: Muscle Car Solutions

Views: 3,833

Keywords: edelbrock, carburetor, heat soak, hot start, edelbrock carb, holley, holley carb, quick fuel, demon, quadrajet, brawler, fuel boiling, flooding carburetor fix, carburetor tips and tricks, carburetor installation, holley carburetor flooding, how to stop carb flooding, fuel boiling over, carb spacer, divided spacer, four hole spacer, open spacer, carb adapter, quadrajet adapter, tuning an edelbrock carburetor, how to tune a carb

Id: 7Ja0PVebRjc

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024