About forty-eight years ago ('63) I was just a youngster of 21, but I was the lone night parts man at a Chevrolet dealer ship. We GSD's an AFB rather than rebuild it the put a new one on the customers car. We were supposed to destroy the GSD'd parts but that one slipped thru the fence and ended up at my place. Back then I was just a dumb kid and didn't know all about fluid dynamics and CFM specs and all that jazz so I went ahead and mounted the carb up to my other wise stock ’60, 235. The Graham’s always had machine tools in the basement and my dad and I took a 235 manifold and milled the intake box off and opened up a pocket so we could brazed a box and flange on it to take the AFB.
Well it ran, and it ran fine, it didn’t have any better acceleration that it did with the Rochester B but one thing it did have was top end. I could bury the speedometer, which I couldn’t do with the Rochester. Downers Grove was out in the boonies and there wasn’t as much traffic back then. And, we were kids so we could get away with crazy things like speeding, drag racing, running a California rake, drinkin’ a few beers out on a dirt road, smokin’ Lucky’s and such.
Not sure how that AFB would have performed had I re-jetted it, done some head work, installed a hot cam and increased the displacement. Uncle Sam got me for the rest of the 60’s and by the time I got discharged we were into midgets and I didn’t see another Stovebolt till five years ago.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
