V8 Fuelling
The 3.9 arrived with a Holley 390cfm 4-barrel carb:
It was wank, would stall off-road and froze up at least once. So, eventually I bought a Weber/Edelbrock 500:
That was also wank, stalled on side-slopes and used all the fuel in the world. Despite being rated for off-road use it wouldn't hold tune for more than a fortnight before the idle screws would vibrate themselves round. Fantastic.
Stalled on a side-slope, thanks Weber!
So, I swapped the Weber for a 3.5 Flapper EFI setup. I don't have a picture but it looked a lot like this, only with a stupid flappy airflow meter in the intake:
This was better than either of the carbs had ever been. It started & ran better, it was smoother and more responsive, and more reliable despite being a fairly poorly regarded system. If anyone says “Aaahckshually the carb induction noise…” I'll punch them because no, sorry, job #1 is to make the engine run as well as possible. You can have your carb induction noise and your dusty vinyl records and go live in a cave with no Wifi and I'll be driving round in my V8 that just works.
Faahckin' carb monkies!
Anyway, through one thing and another I ended up converting the system over to Megasquirt EFI for fuel-only at the time, which was better again than the flapper system - tunable, did away with the flapper airflow meter, simple, and very tinkerable-with.
Someone once said “the great thing about carbs is you can fix them in the middle of a field”, but every time I've seen someone fixing a carb in a field they haven't appreciated this pearl of wisdom.
And so it remained until the rebuild and the upgrade to 4.6 V8 with MS'n'EDIS.
