Just curious to know cause some links on youtube took me to some people who have 3 carbs on their engines. One of them on a 6 cylinder engine. What's the benefit of doing that?
If you run one carb per cyl or one carb for every two you can tune for more power and economy. Also makes it much more of a pain in the rear. Getting more air with two or more big carbs makes great high end power but hurts drivability.(and harder to tune)
I think it's more of a nostalgia thing. When hotrodding started in the 50's you could only get a carb to flow about 300 cfm I believe since the aftermarket did not produce large cfm carbs at the time the only way to feed a built up motor was to put multiple carbs on it. Nowdays I don't see the purpose of running multiple carbs unless it's a full race motor
I once had a Cheby 327 with "three deuces". When they were tuned and in sync, they worked great. Unfortunately, it depended on what day of the week or *month* they wanted to work together (trying to get same relative mixture I suppose). I traded for a 3 bbl. Wrong move again. That was still too much so I went to a Quadrajet (750cfm ???). With the mods that had been done to the motor, that was the best overall performer of them all. Bigger does not equal better ("I wish I had a nickel for .....").
I don't believe there is ANY reason to run multiple carbs on the street anymore! Back when the biggest carb was a Rochester 2 bbl you needed three or four of them for a real performance engine and you needed to sybchronize them often to keep it running properly. I still have the carb synchronizer tool and it has made me a lot of money over the years but I am willing to sell it to anyone who wants to tune his multi-carb setup!
I would be interested as i collect some of the older tools, Is this a top hat design, Or vacuum type? What kind of price? Any pictures?
Of course the cool factor comes into play, but in some cases, multi-carbs can give you some unique acceleration/power/economy options. I used to own a 70 440 Six-Pack Challenger R/T with a mildly built engine and the three Holley 2-bbls, a 500 cfm center (primary) carb, and two 350 cfm's front and back, for a total of 1200 cfm when all were in use. I had a "progressive" linkage, where the 500 was the only carb used until the slider rod on the linkage reached the "stops" that pulled in the outer two carbs simultaneously,..... then all hell would break loose. Driving around town, the car got decent milage as long as I kept it on the 500 carb, and highway milage was unbelievable for a big block Dodge cruising just off the center carb, (21 mpg) but, add the extra 700 cfm of the outer carbs at the right time (according to how I set the linkage), even highly modified cars couldn't beat me, or keep up. In my street racing days, depending on the "track" conditions, what size rear tires I was running, traction, etc, sometimes I'd set the linkage to open all 3 carbs from zero throttle for total Armageddon right off the line (or 3 block long burnouts) or, set the outer carbs to kick in at a certain point to avoid overpowering the car off the line if traction was an issue. All I know is that Six-Pack set up allowed me to drive a street car docile enough that my mom could take it grocery shopping, economical enough that if I played the throttle and linkage set-up right, was easier on gas than most other hot rods, and gave me a big can of whoop-a** I could open up on unsuspecting rivals on weekends and make enough money to get me through the next week in style. No single carb ever gave me that many options and advantages
