femurphy77
Grandmaster
Had a kid living next door one time that had a very newish late '70's Trans Am, it was the one with the Darth Vader snout. Came with the 403 BOP motor that he promptly pulled and had built which on paper should have been very potent but had substandard performance. He'd allowed his engine builder to put one of the then new Edelbrock spreadbore carbs on it and one day he came over and asked me to tune up. I told him that I didn't know how to tune an edelbrock but if he'd put a 780 Holley on it I could help him.The black art of carb tuning eludes many younger folks.
The attitude that “It’s running fine” overcomes the urge to tinker.
I discovered long ago that you may not find HP beyond a few tuning in the car but drive ability goes up as you get them right.
A couple of days later he shows up at my door with a Summit box containing a brand new 780 Holley. I set about doing a few tweaks to it and in short order that thing became a monster with said kid smiling into the sunset in a cloud of tire smoke. A couple of days later I saw him driving some non descript econobox, when I asked him what he was doing in the ****box and he said his dad had taken it away from him because it was too fast.
His dad stopped by a few days after that and he was slobbering over how much better the car ran and it only took a carb change. I corrected him and told him it only required a carb tuning, somebody with edelbrock experience could have probably made it just as much a screamer but I didn't have any edelbrock parts or knowledge.