The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop 261 build input please?

I'm finally biting the bullet and pulling the ol'235 this winter. Have located several donor 261s for rebuild. Want a good road truck. Suggestions on rebuild from the sharks?

This is a '56 Chevy, Fenton headers, 6=8 Clifford intake w/600cfm 4 bbl, HEI, 3.31 posi rear, have two 3-spd syncro trans, one w/ OD. I realize the OD would be overkill as is the 600cfm carb. Just head turners for kicks and giggles. :confused:

There has been a lot of discussion lately on rebuilds and cam selection. Check the archives. I have run a 600 Holley on a Clifford 4bbl intake on a modified 261. Also used a 500 Carter, 500 Edelbrock, 2 Holley Weber 2 bbls, and originally 2 Rochester B's on on an Offy dual carb manifold.These set ups were on the same engine.All the 4bbls needed some tuning before performing well. The Holly acts larger on The Clifford than you might think. The relatively large plenum under the carb allows a lot of mixture to accumulate ,fooling the engine into thinking it has a larger carb.The stock jetting was ok and the truck ran as well as the smaller Carter and Edelbrock. For my engine , all the above single 4 bbl carbs were more than needed.I now have a Carter WCFB 400 cfm 59 Vette carb installed.This may be the best of the bunch.If I were to do it from scratch, 3 small one barrels on a log intake would look cool.And I bet it would carburete well with a little tuning.

Well, way back when a freind of my Dad's had a dragster ( we're talking drag safari days) with a 261" Chevt with a Wayne head. He ran 3 2bbl 97's on alcohol. I remember him reaming out the jets until there was nothing but threads left and then drilling out the jet mountings and turning up some brass to get bigger. At that time dragsters didn't run side by side and there was no ET's, just speed. The flatheads were running about 100+ mph and ole Cal was running in the high ninties. He finally got a run with the Kenz+Leslie rail heads up and beat them by about a bus lenght. Probably not on the thread but 261's just bring back memories.
Dennis

Hi guys, I've been watching this thread for awhile now and have been gettin some information. I'm planning on putting a 261 in my '55 chevy sedan, hopefully a 59-62 variety for the full flow option. I've been collecting various parts for it and so far I have an HEI distributor, an edmunds custom 2x1 intake, a mcgurk 2x1 intake, and either a tattersfield or fenton 2x1 intake, i'm not sure which. I was thinking of going with 2 holley weber 2 barrels per tom langdon. Maybe with a 3/4 race cam. I dont know, just lookin to get more info at this point i guess.

Chuddy, the Weber Holleys performed very well on my engine, but they suffered from terminal crappy quality.Flakes from the carb body casting would break off and clog the jets or jam the float needle.The supposed factory rebuilt carbs had sloppy throttle shafts causing an erratic idle. All that plus they are butt ugly.This was my experience, not necessarily true for all Holley Webers ,but check the carbs carefully before using them.

Chuddy,
Get the real Webbers. A lot of the 90 to 120 CI foreign motors used them. I used one on a Datsun PU for better than 200K miles no problem. Previse I had used a Holly /Webber of a Pinto. It was a POS.
Dennis
I was OK but I got over it.

On my friends 261. Dual Holley-webers, full race cam, shaved head, cast fenton headers, offy 2x1 intake. Idles reasonably smooth at 650 rpm. Runs like a scalded cat about 200 hp. After building, we had dual rochesters, it wouldn't idle under 800 rpm, and was a dog in city traffic, but the dual webers (from Langdon) have worked great. Maybe we were lucky?

Fred, what kind of linkage did he use and how did he run the chokes? Thanks

Chad

This was on my 37 pu.Just some Heim joints and steel rods ,Cheap, easy and it works smoothly. I removed the round covers on the auto chokes, silver soldiered linkage arms onto the existing little arms . Linked the two together with a length of rod with the choke hooked up on rear carb.You can just pump the gas a few times, no choke, the engine starts right up, then just feather the gas pedal for the first few minutes. [img]http://pstr-m05.ygpweb.aol.com/data/006/52/CE/F1/9F/kclH4+kAoUNZaXBdnAN1FsN+J34C01j-0180.jpg[/img]