Always been with fuel injection, so I have very little carb experience. As much as I would like every last HP out of the engine, driveability and ease of tuning are more important I guess. I'm looking for something easy to work on for starters. Which carb would be a better "starter" carb, the Edelbrock or the QFT?

 

I would recommend going with the qft. They are engine tested before they are shipped. Once you set idle mix, float levels and idle rpm im guessing the only thing that's probably going to need tuning much is the primary and secondary main jets. If you get a lean stumble at part throttle cruise when you attempt to accelerate slowly from a normal cruise rpm its likely that the main jets will need to be larger.

Switching jets is easy it takes about 15 min or less.

Getting the QFT dialed in probably will take a bit more patience than the edelbrock but it should not be a "nightmare". QFT techs or mustang forum members should be able to help you out. (Dialing in the QFT should be almost the same as the holley I have so that's what im basing my suggestions off of)

If you get the edelbrock once you have it set up and dialed in you'll just want to switch to the QFT anyhow knowing that chances are there's a noticeable amount of HP left on the table. So save yourself a bunch of money and just get the QFT.

-Gun

 

And buy a tuning book for Holley carbs. You have to know what you're doing to set a carb up right, and there are fewer and fewer places these days that understand how carbs work.

 

Well...since it's just "opinions" you're interested in...my current setup (Weiand Stealth with a 600 vacuum secondary Holley) to me seems to run pretty good on my 289 with a .508 lift/292 duration cam and headers. It's a dual-plane, but I have had also had good performance on a similar setup running an old single-plane Street Dominator.

 

thanks for the reply 'diputado'. I called QFT and im interested, but the carbs come with lilttle tuning instructions. the Edelbrock comes with a manual and a DVD. So i'm back to the 'toss up'. lol thanks again.

 

There is lots of tuning info on the QFT site!

-Gun