I think you have found your problem. You should not be able to kill the car by spraying the outside of the carb.(unless you are getting it down the throat) Could it be leaking through and unused stud hole in the intake? Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Dvlscoupe, Do you smoke (or know someone who does)? Maybe it's time to start......No I don't want you to start a new bad habit, a serious old timer top fuel crew chief showed me this trick. I was having a stuborn vacuum leak that we couldn't find, and had gone through several cans of carb cleaner. Instead of that, he opened the throttle plates just a little (air cleaner was off) and stuck a vacuum hose down into the intake, then let the throttle plates shut. He then shoved a couple of rags in the throttle bores to seal them up, and started blowing cigarette smoke into the hose, in my case it leaked out right between the carb and intake joint, on the left rear side. pulled the carb, and could see by the impression left in the gasket that just a little sliver of the intake opening wasn't being covered by the gasket and there was the leak. The was all Edelbrock equipment, so I used their carb isolater spacer kit to seal it. The smoke trick is nice because it shows you exactly where to look for the leak. Hope this helps.
Oh yeah, one more thing....I have seen the vacuum brake port and base plates cracked on Edelbrock carbs because someone over-tightened them. I've cracked a base plate myself somehow and for the life of me I don't know how.....it wasn't found for years because the car still ran fine. I've changed and rebuilt hundreds of carb's and I'm sure I didn't over-tighten it, but I wasn't the only person to work on that particular car so maybe someone prior to me did. The Edelbrock base plates do seem to crack a little more often that the Holleys.
I tried the smoke trick, thought for sure it would show me something but I couldn't seal the carb up tight enough. So if the starting fluid stalls the engine what could be happening other than flooding the intake? Seems to me it's still just showing a leak. Either way I can't seem to get it to stop. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
I've found that my edelbrock afb likes 4.5lbs of pressure too. I have a 500cfm avs, and I had to jet it down 1 size on the primary, and 2 on the seconaries. I'm 2,000ft above sea level though. It was really rich out of the box, but after that it's right on the money.
I've run edelbrocks and holleys with the same tye of pump and had no issues. I usually use a carter mechanical street pump thats 6-8 lbs. The pertronix modules are supposed to have about .010" air gap between the reluctor wheel and the module. You might check that out sometime just to be sure it hasnt changed. I cant figure out the reaction you're getting from the starting fluid around the carb. Maybe the plugs are fouled to the point that when you spray it the fuel mixture becomes too rich for it? The other way you can have a vac leak and hear a whistle and not be easily detected is if the intake gasket has failed and its leaking under the intake, from the lifter valley. Spraying around the outside of it won't help, it will whistle nomatter what you do.
Did you try disconnecting all the vacuum accessories and plugging all the ports? Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Yeah, the ports are all plugged up. One of my buddies just mentioned that it sounds like it skipped time so maybe I'll look in to that. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
I feel like I've beat the vacuum horse to death. I'm gone try one last thing and see if I can have any luck with a smoke machine. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
Just in case any comes across this thread having similar problems I got it solved. Decided the spark issue had to be a problem and swapped the cap and rotor hoping that would solve it instead of swapping out the petronix. So the cap n rotor got 'er running. Dialed in the timing and she's runnin' good, just need to adjust the air n fuel mix now. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
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