[Cliff R]

"If it’s not a restoration why pay big money for an inferior early Q-jet?

Plenty of reasonably priced ‘77 and later Q-jet cores are out there and are a far better design."

+2, 3 and 4.

Since I have no dog an anyones fight (retired from carb building) I'd stay as far away as humanly possible from a Holley Street Avenger (or any of their "bottom of the barrel offerings") and even further away from an Edelbrock AFB or AVS clone. The only good sound any of those make is when I "tink" them off the dumster outside the shop or hit the round trash can by the shipping table with one of my famous "hook shots".

I get locals crawling up here ALL the time with that junk on their "fresh" engine builds BITCHING about all sorts of issues. Then I take a look at the "cobbled" up install where they cut the original fuel line with a hack saw and ran 3' of black rubber hose around to the back of the carb for a fuel supply, often out over the valve cover so it can pick up heat from the exhaust along the way and rub on just about everything it between....LOVELY!

I love stories so here's a good one. Local guy shows up with his engine builder and they can't get their brand new out of the box Edelbrock AVS to do anything right. He is "dead heading" it with a Holley mechanical pump and a regulator and it starts "loading up" after sitting at idle for about 1-2 minutes. I removed it from the engine, put it on my test engine (with a return) and cranked the fuel pressure up to 10, then to 12 psi and it idles fine and doesn't load up or flood at all. Put it back on his dead-headed set-up and clear down to 3psi with the regulator and it floods out. How are you going to fix that? I asked him. He said it didn't do that with the stock mechanical pump but he got a bloody nose when the car nosed over top of first gear because the stock pump wouldn't feed it (454 about 430hp).

He also noted that aside from flooding after it sits at idle for a minute or so that fuel economy is HORRIBLE, and it's got a stumble going into the secondaries that will NOT tune out no matter how tight they wind the spring on the top flap. I ran into the exact same scenario when I drag strip tested them. I was finally able to get rid of the huge stumble by winding the piss out of the spring, but never completey got rid of the noticable transition onto the secondaries. We ran it on two different vehicles on that private track outing and it was the SLOWEST of all 8 carbs we carried along that day, on both vehicles.

I know, I know, go to a car show with 250 cars present and 238 of them will have an Edlebrock intake topped with one of those pieces of bovine excrement, or even worse a Holley Street Avenger.......because they are shiny and cheap.........FWIW.......