Anyone have any ideas for some good side draft carburetors that I can use on a custom built intake. I prefer something that could be found in a junkyard or on ebay for cheap. I've thought about motorcycle carbs, 260 / 240 Z carbs, Jaguar, Honda prelude. Any thoughts or other ideas? I would like to have one barrel per cylinder on an early Hemi. Thanks
S.U. carbs. Skinners Union, made in England, came on all sorts of Limey cars for many years BEFORE they used the Stromberg. One barrel, side draft came in many sizes. Simple, functional carb. Any old British car mechanic should have a few laying around.
I'm adapting Harley carbs to a Straight 8 Buick. Do yours have to be 1 bbls? Four 2 bbls would look cool too! Lots of bikes have really good sidedraft carbs - Dont overlook them as a source! ~Scotch~
I got mine from a guy in Italy, names Alfa-something on ebay. Sells Dellortos pretty cheap. Mine run fine, and I have never even put a screwdriver to them yet.
Being a 240z owner, I vote for SUs as well, they're SOOO easy compared to even a Rochester 2GC. Early Z-cars litter junkyards around here and they all have 2 apiece. You wanna get the early ones, I think pre-'72...
The 72 240z still has the good ones. I think it was 73 and up that got bad. I think nissan either tried to make them or farmed it out to someone different. This is just off the top of my head though.
You can also find SU's and Bendix sidedrafts on older Volvo 4 or 6 cyl boat motors. My only word of warning, is to spend plenty of time making certain that the throttle linkage opens all the throttles in unison. Tuning ( syncronising )them is no big deal with a hose, but there is a gadget called the Unisyn that takes all the guesswork out of the job. I have 9 Bendix's that I salvaged and have not figured out where I am going to use them, yet. I have 4 Weber side draft carbs, and my plan is to make a crossover setup for the 454 that I am building to replace my 396. I have a block and heads on a stand for a pattern so I can look at and try the various options. I was thinking of taking an old aluminum after market manifold and welding the tubes on just above the flange at the joint between the manifold and the head. This would save having to make a valley cover and hopefully look cool. There is a manifold out there for the big block, but I have never seen one, and I know they are very expensive. Bob
I would like to play with a small V8 fed by an octet of Mikuni or kehein carbs. They carry 1200 and 1300 cc engines to 11000 rpm. surely four could feed 2.5 liters to half that rpm and 8 might carry a mild small block of any kind. I know, they didn't have CV carbs back in the day. I'm sure someone would have snapped them up if they had!
Lots of good ideas. Thanks for the tips. I have also heard that the early 240 carbs are good. Now, where to find these SU carbs? I don't see too many early Limey cars in junk yards arround here or Datsun's for that mater. j-jock<SCRIPT type=text/javascript> vbmenu_register("postmenu_2083066", true); </SCRIPT> Have you thought of starting with a Kinsler or Hilborn mechanical FI intake and modifying that for your big block? I see those at swap meets occasionally. If anyone has a set of 8 1bbls or 4 2bbls side drafts for sale, please PM me. Thanks
an ol timer ha turned me on to side draft carbs for an inlne 6 I am attempting to build and I have been picking up carter yh carbs. from ebay. cheap and easy to rebuild !!!!
Here is an update of sorts. We built a 400 small block for my son's 47 international, and here is the engine with 4 Weber DCOE carbs Bob
A few thoughts: The S.U. (Skinners Union) carbs used on British cars worked very well for awhile, but the slides would wear, and then synchronization was impossible. When I was still working on Triumphs in the late 1960's, difficult to find good used ones. Datsun used primarily Hitachi's on the 1960's roadsters and the early Z's. The design of the Hitachi was changed in 1973 to comply with Federal smog emission requirements. Datsun used 2 barrel Mikuni-Solex carbs (similar to a Weber DCOE) on their performance roadsters and Z's in those countries not having smog emission at the time. I had two 44-mm Mikuni-Solex 2-barrels on a 2 liter Datsun roadster in the late 1960's. This was a factory non-smog set-up. We used four Mikuni-Solex motorcycle carbs on a 2000 cc Pinto race engine with great success; but they were TOTALLY worn out at the end of one season!!! Carter built the side-draft type YH carbs from the early 1950's through 1966. These would be my choice for any hot rod application as they are virtually bulletproof except for using a diaphragm type accelerator pump (diaphragms don't particularly care for ethanol). They also use AFB style main metering jets and fuel valves. If one decides to use the Carter YH, one needs to do some homework, as Carter produced more than 50 different units. These basically fall into 4 different generations; and while they may look the same to a novice, parts from the four generations mostly should NOT be mixed. Jon.
when I built my set up , I went with 69-72 Datsun 240 z carbs, don't go with the later ones like everyone else said there junk , I got them off ebay since I was having trouble finding them local, first you'll have to find out how much cfm you need to flow, that will determin what size and how many you need to run , theres a chart floating around here some where, I went with 3 on my 292 , there 1 3/4 , they work really well , very simple and reasonable $ <TABLE cellPadding=6 width=600> <TBODY> <TR> <TD align=center></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> <TABLE class=tborder cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=6 width="100%" align=center border=0> <TBODY> <TR> <TD class=tcat></TD></TR> <TR> <TD class=alt1 align=center> <TABLE cellPadding=6 width=600> <TBODY> <TR> <TD align=center></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> <!-- div page end -->
Barnes Daniels, one of the original Ramchargers, used 8 of the Carter side drafts on a custom manifold and developed 326 flywheel horsepower from the 277 cubic inch Plymouth A engine (1957). He might have been the E/G record holder if it wasn't for Herman Mozer, another original Ramcharger, who was running a '53 Dodge E/G with the little 241 hemi. As it was, Herman collected all the rcords.
Yep you can't beat an SU for easy to tune and easily adaptable to one of about anything. If you can't find them there is a solex ( I think) copy of them that they used on the Datsun 240 or 260 Z Jon, S.U. Stood for Skinners Union? you posted that to screw with me right? Scotch, Which carbs are you using? I helped build and intake and tune 3 M-74 Linkerts on a 235 Chevy for a guy once way back when you cold still find 'em. Droolin leaky sumbiches that they were.
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