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Episode 8: Project COVID-1953 – Rebuilding The Carburetor

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Episode 8 – The focus in the garage today is on the carburetor. Rick uses a Holley 600 CFM with new needle, gaskets, floats, everything. It takes some work to clean out all the passages, but when finished, it’s like brand new. Also important note, you don’t want to over-carburet an engine, so the 600 CFM pairs up perfectly with the mild built Chevy 350 small block. Now, that it’s finished, it is ready to go in with the engine.

Episode 8 – Video Transcript

Rick Drewry:
Now that the engine is built and pretty much ready to go, I moved my efforts to the carburetor. I’ve got plenty of old Holley carburetors, couple Carters, some Rochesters, but a Holley 600 CFM carburetor is really, to me, a perfect match up to a mild built Chevy 350 small block.

So what I did was I took the carburetor, for $40 I got a rebuild kit, and I tore the carburetor completely apart, soaked everything, put a brand new needle and seat in, new gaskets, new floats, everything. So, we are good to go. The carburetor wasn’t in bad shape. It had a lot of sediment from just sitting for years. So, cleaning that all out, cleaning the passages out; it should be like brand new. I got that completely done.

One thing to keep in mind, you can actually over-carburet an engine very easily. A lot of people make that mistake by thinking, “Oh, I’ll put a big 750 or an 850 or something like that on a small block Chevy.” And they’re not built for that. Unless you have a high compression, major cam in it, you do not need that much CFM out of carburetor. 600 CFM is kind of like the sweet spot and that’s why there’s a bunch of them out there. And then, like I said, with a mild cam, Vortec heads it’ll flow well. It should be a very reliable setup and should match perfectly.

Now that it’s built, I’ll have it set aside. And when I put the engine back in the car, I’ll put the carburetor on then and test fire the motor.

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