As Jon points out not everyone is a fan of the Edelbrock carburetors:
"The e-clones are, and forever will be, banned from our shop......no sales, no parts, no tech, nothing!"
But as Jon has mentioned in the past the Edelbrock AFB clones do work out well for some of us. I have one on the sbc 350 engine in my street rod, a '32 Ford roadster. I got it as a #1405 and added an electric choke. Being familiar with jetting modifications to optimize performance and using a long, steep hill near my home as a dynomometer I experimented with primary and secondary jets and metering rods and found a combination that works well. This experimenting with the tune up also included trying various spark plug heat ranges and distributor initial timing, vacuum advance curves and centrifugal advance curves. Since it was a new engine build all of those variables had to be dealt with. But in the end my experience has been like Kevin's:
"The 1400-series Performer carb should be good for even a mildly-build 350 engine without the need of a spacer. I have a crate 350 motor in my '60 Impala, bored .030 over, mild performance cam, and Edelbrock Performer series dual-plane intake manifold. When I purchased the Impala, it had a 1400 with manual choke (1405) which I converted to electric choke (1406) to improve driveability for my wife and daughters."
There is hope for you based on our experiences. The real troublesome issue I had was with vapor lock that was severe on hot days in slow moving traffic. In an attempt to reduce heat input into the engine in general and fuel system in particular I added a fan shroud to the electric puller fan setup, put a thermal spacer between the carburetor and the Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, changed the fuel filter to one with a return port, put heat reflective sleeves over all the fuel lines, made a heat shield to reduce header heat input into the fuel pump and made ducting that feeds cool air to the air filter and carburetor. The cumulative effect of all that was to eliminate the vapor lock issue no matter how hot the day and how gridlocked the traffic.
You'll notice in the photos that this engine is not spotlessly clean. That's because the roadster is driven regularly and has accumulated nearly 25,000 miles during the last 17 years and at least this one Edelbrock AFB clone hasn't been touched since the original jetting was figured out.
