Running great

[Mancar1]

Guess the new Holly on the 390 decided it has had enough of a break-in period. No more morning flooding out. Just when I told the Holly that I was swapping it for a Edelbrock.....all smoothed out, and the 68 is starting/running great.
Lets hear about anyone else's Gremlins that visit every now now and then?
If I may add that the 68's heater core hasn't spewed since the one time several days back. May have been a warning shot across the Bow.
Keep on Trucking....John

[sargentrs]

A little intimidation works wonders sometimes. Congrats!

[fastEdsel]

Happy to hear your '68 is running great! But, being in the aviation business 30+ years, all us who have significant experience with naturally aspirated engines know very well what carburetor ice is and what happens when throttle plates freeze up and choke off air supply. We have a control in the cockpit to source air from the air filter, and source the air from a muff around the exhaust stacks to force hot air into the intake of the carb to melt away any icing condition and if not caught or "managed" in time, can cause an in flight engine failure and the rest can be headlines, unfortunately. The cockpit control is simply called "carb heat." Carb heat is also not needed on aircraft equipped with fuel injection for obvious reasons. There also is not a single Holley carb made that does not or will not freeze. If the ambient temperature outside is mixed with high humidity air, they will freeze when the engine is warming up. Holleys do not need "breaking in", they either work or they don't. Most just have to be managed by that I mean that when you start your Holley equipped engine and it goes to fast idle, then after a couple minutes the engine sounds like it is flooding out, just turn off the ignition, wait a couple minutes, re start it and it will, should, run just fine. The reason is that the heat that is developing inside the engine rises again and melts the ice from the carb plates. Try it sometime, just start your engine then touch the carb at the idle mixture screws, it should be cold'ern a mother in laws kiss. It's basic refrigeration theory, air compressed at the carb plates then rapidly expanding creating the cooling effect. You can go to Google and enter "carburetor ice" and it is all there including the air charts. Good science, but don't throw away the Edlebrock just yet. Hope this helps, keep the rubber side down.

[Mancar1]

I spoke of a break in period as a bit of humor :wink, but thanks for the in depth reply.

[fastEdsel]

Yes, I had a giggle about the "Holley break in." My Grand daughter and I took the Edsel for a drive yesterday and the same thing happened with the 600 Holley freezing up during the engine warm up. And it hardly ever fails that I just switch off the engine, wait a couple minutes then start it up again and "it's a happy time!" A lot of folks get all upset, get in and floor the engine to clear it out which in most cases makes it worse, then get underneath the hood, remove the air cleaner and monkee futch with idle mixtures, choke settings, numerous trips to NAPA or Bumper to Bumper to buy carb kits or entire replacement carbs and ALL they had to do, is just switch off the engine for a couple minutes. The first objective for this entire exercise is to be smarter than the carb, once that is understood the rest is easy. Ford has always battled carb ice as well have the other car engineers and all here have seen the air risers coming off the right hand exhaust manifold and Ford even went as far as installing plates under their Motorcraft carbs that allowed coolant that was warming up to flow through them to help melt the ice. Good idea until they sprung a leak. This is a great post and a lot of information can be shared here. Take care and have a Great Easter!