Anybody Actually Goin' Fast With a Holley 3 BBL?

[jtower1969]

I asked the same question to my Dad when I was doing my motor over..I was told a few ran good..most didn't. I went with a Baker Preped 950 HP Holley...Runs like a beast.

[markjohnson]

I had spent a lot of money on my 950 CFM unit, even adding a secondary metering plate to it, and was using it in conjunction with an old Edelbrock C427X dual plane intake on top of my L-88. I thought I actually had it dialed in and running good for a while there. Then one day I pulled it off for some reason I don't even remember and just threw on a box-stock 850 Holley DP and I gotta tell 'ya.....it felt like I had installed a Nitrous system because the car felt so much faster. Needless to say the 850 DP stayed on permanently and the 950 3BBL went into a box in the basement where it remains to this day.

[PxTx]

I think this is a pretty common experience with many people. Not described too scientifically so I'm gonna assume you don't have much data on the differences between the ways the carbs were set-up.

Motion commonly modified them with mechanical secondries, which then required the trick secondary squiter mod to help with the big secondary venturi opening.

Were both still vacuum secondaries? How about the accelerator pump configs like cam, squirter size etc?

The metering plate you referenced, did you mean a metering block, or did you install a modified/different metering plate?

I agree, they may be difficult to tune but there are better resources available these days. Joel made them run by puting them on a dyno and using an exhaust gas analyser to tune each circuit. Now you can use a wide band O2 and drive it on the road and log data.

I am confident that they can still be tuned to make respectable HP and decent drivability. Maybe not quite as good as a modern carb, but certainly within a few percentage points.


[ QUOTE ]
I had spent a lot of money on my 950 CFM unit, even adding a secondary metering plate to it, and was using it in conjunction with an old Edelbrock C427X dual plane intake on top of my L-88. I thought I actually had it dialed in and running good for a while there. Then one day I pulled it off for some reason I don't even remember and just threw on a box-stock 850 Holley DP and I gotta tell 'ya.....it felt like I had installed a Nitrous system because the car felt so much faster. Needless to say the 850 DP stayed on permanently and the 950 3BBL went into a box in the basement where it remains to this day.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Chevy454]

Some of the old guys over at Speedtalk said they were the stuff until the modern stuff came along...but you *really* had to know your way around a Holley, or it wouldn't work. I think Joe Sherman said his 3 barrel was 10-15hp up on his commparable 4-barrel at the time...?

[markjohnson]

Well Paul..........I'm sorry if it wasn't explained "scientifically" enough for you or that you didn't understand the Holley terminology. The 950 3BBL Vacuum Secondary was removed and the 850 DP (Double Pumper) was installed box-stock. This was done over the winter months while the drag strips were closed so I don't have any official drag strip numbers, but seat-of-the-pants revealed the 850 DP to be DRAMATICALLY faster. I had modified my 950 Holley 3 BBL (they didn't have jets in the rear, remember) with a kit that Holley offers that puts a Secondary Metering Plate (block, whatever) at the rear of the carb for easy jet changes, just like the front. As far as Joel Rosen is concerned, he obviously didn't think much of those Holley 3 BBL's in their out-of-the-box configuration and sold a kit to convert them to mechanical Secondaries. I believe it was called something like the "Motion Gear Drive Injector Kit". It included two meshing gears that fit onto the ends of the Primary and Secondary throttle shafts, thus allowing them to open at the same time and a very strange squirter on the Primary side that stretched across the top of the carb and discharged into the Secondary throttle bores. To many people and even Joel Rosen himself, this was the best way to get them to function decently. Now.....I may not have an EGT Monitor, but I've built and raced several 9-second street cars by the tried and true'd, old fashioned method of spark plug reading, so I really would like to think that I know a thing or two when it comes to dialing in a Holley, in particular to suit my purposes. I've gotten by quite well.

[396L35]

[ QUOTE ]

Well Paul..........I'm sorry if it wasn't explained "scientifically" enough for you or that you didn't understand the Holley terminology. The 950 3BBL Vacuum Secondary was removed and the 850 DP (Double Pumper) was installed box-stock. This was done over the winter months while the drag strips were closed so I don't have any official drag strip numbers, but seat-of-the-pants revealed the 850 DP to be DRAMATICALLY faster. I had modified my 950 Holley 3 BBL (they didn't have jets in the rear, remember) with a kit that Holley offers that puts a Secondary Metering Plate (block, whatever) at the rear of the carb for easy jet changes, just like the front. As far as Joel Rosen is concerned, he obviously didn't think much of those Holley 3 BBL's in their out-of-the-box configuration and sold a kit to convert them to mechanical Secondaries. I believe it was called something like the "Motion Gear Drive Injector Kit". It included two meshing gears that fit onto the ends of the Primary and Secondary throttle shafts, thus allowing them to open at the same time and a very strange squirter on the Primary side that stretched across the top of the carb and discharged into the Secondary throttle bores. To many people and even Joel Rosen himself, this was the best way to get them to function decently. Now.....I may not have an EGT Monitor, but I've built and raced several 9-second street cars by the tried and true'd, old fashioned method of spark plug reading, so I really would like to think that I know a thing or two when it comes to dialing in a Holley, in particular to suit my purposes. I've gotten by quite well.

[/ QUOTE ]
Settle down Mark, get off that computer and get that 62 running again....

[greg5436]

mark i had a 1050 and a 950 installed on my 69 l88 engine. i run the 950 all the time.1050 was hard to tune.but one day i installed a 850. it ran better and was more responsive. but the 950 looks correct on my car. greg