New 19270009 crate Holley issue

[78chevstepside]

Installed 19270009 350 crate engine 333hp with a Holley avenger carb that came with it . It's a dual feed carb that came with rubber fuel line . It leaked on start up and had a poor idle . After messing with It for 8 hours I replaced it with a edelbrock 1406 . This set up worked fine . The rubber hose set up dripped and never did stop dripping . The Mr gasket steel line hit the heater hose . I spent the extra money for a turn key engine . I took my truck to a old school tuner shop to get the Holley working .This gentleman could not get the Holley to work correctly neither. He claims that this engine was meant to run on fuel injection . The Holley was incompatible for this engine . Claims that the carb colds idle is way to high because poor warm up of fuel . He claims it ran good after warm up . Any thoughts on this theory? The truck is running perfect now with the 1406 .

[Dead Parrot]

Lots of folks successfully swap between FI and carbed and have fine running motors. Don't see the 'meant for FI' story being correct.

If Carb #1 fails and Carb #2 works fine, my vote is something about Carb #1 is bad.

Can you return the Holley under warranty?

[SunSoaked]

I had a nightmare experience with Holley. Been running great with my 1406 Eddy. Engines do not know or care if thier being fed by carbs or FI.

[weq92f]

.
The combo was marketed, sold and delivered with a carb. Not intended for use only with FI... nope.

-klb

Flip fa ya...

[78chevstepside]

Certainly going to try to get some kind of compensation for the Holley that did not perform . Looking back I would have bought the 19270008 that lacks carb , intake , balancer and flex plate distributer , plugs and wires . I was basically looking for anyone that might have knowledge of this issue . I personally think the carb should work .

[sweetk30]

who ever sold the engine combo is the place to start on monday to call for warranty problems .

they then will give you another or tell you who to call that handles there warranty coverage problems.

good point for you is you have done some work to prove the carb is defective already with the edelbrock swap .

[PGSigns]

Well your old school tuner did not know what he was doing. With the holley did you check float levels? I have a 670 street avenger on my 66 and it took a bit of tuning out the box. We pulled a little jet out of it, got the electric choke set correctly for my truck, changed the accelerator pump cam and went up on the squirter size. All this was to make it work with the combo I have. Thats engine, trans truck and weather. Unless you get a turn key engine that has been on the dyno with the carb you get you need to go through it all.
Jimmy

[78chevstepside]

The old school tunerr did do all of the above . This guy has been tuning engines for as long as I can remember. The Holley may have ran good enough for some people's standards .

[PGSigns]

I looked up the cam spec for that engine from GM and it is a carbed cam for sure. Where he came up with the engine is designed for efi that baffles me.
Jimmy

[Captainfab]

My guess is that he based that off of the fact that the L31 Vortec heads do not have an exhaust crossover to keep a carb warm in colder climates.

Originally Posted by PGSigns

I looked up the cam spec for that engine from GM and it is a carbed cam for sure. Where he came up with the engine is designed for efi that baffles me.
Jimmy

[78chevstepside]

Thinking there is truth to what your stating . This engine runs good with the 1406 carb but is cold blooded . I set the timing at 12 degrees 32 degrees total . This is whats in the instruction manual .This ran great better when cold but would diesel after shut off slightly when warm . Turning down the idle made warm up troublesome to correct the diesel . The tuner tuned the engine to 29 degrees total timing . This made the diesel after shut off go away . Warm up is acceptable. The instructions also states to install the distributor 12 degrees before top dead center . This worked great. Not sure if it was really necessary. This tuner works on a lot of race cars. He seems to lack in communication skills . Captain you explained it to many better then the tuner did .

[PGSigns]

32 degrees may be a better number. When I had the Edelbrock on the 66 (L31 crate engine with a comp cam) had some trouble with deiseling and vapor lock. Put a 1/2" plastic spacer under it and insulated the fuel line. That helped both but did not cure the deiseling. Make sure the throttle blades are not to far open as that helped. On the cold start and being cold natured I did a lot of adjusting on the electric choke and the fast idle for it. There is a sweet spot in there that works fine. I was never able to fully cure the vapor lock on the edelbrock in the hot summers and traffic here. They just boil what little fuel the hold right out. Got to love todays gas. When we tried the holley sniper (and failed) we put a super victor intake on it to even up the runners and they are a perfect match for the vortec heads. My race engine builder does a lot of crate engines and the super victor shows good power and torque through the entire range on the dyno. They are not as big as you may think. So when the efi went south I had sold the edelbrock and got a holley street avenger to go on the engine. After getting it setup and tuned no more vapor lock or deiseling. 15000 or so miles on this combo and it runs very well.
Jimmy

[mattfranklin]

Sorry you had bad luck with your Holley. I've had nothing but good experiences with the few I've bought: classic 650 die cast, classic 780 die cast, and my most recent was a 770 Street Avenger aluminum.