Hi everyone.
I have been following a number of the threads on timing and carb setup but I am unclear on several things.

I am about to stuff a 540 inch BB with the E'brock 2 x 4s setup in my '75. What should I set the distributor to before startup? The carbs are not new. They have the metering rods that came with the manifold in them. What initial setting should I use for the idle screws?

Also, I have tried to access the timing and carb documents on BarryK's website. I get an error message that says the page cannot be found. Anyone else having trouble?

Thanks for the help.

 

Hmm...two Edelbrock carbs. I'm really thinking that they should be set up and tuned independent of each other before you have both of them on the engine at the same time. I think there is a block off plate available, if not it would not be too difficult to make one. The reason I'm suggesting this is that not only do you need to tune each carb, but you will also need to balance them together. It would be almost impossible to get a decent tune if they aren't balanced.

For example, let's assume that one of the carbs is running a lean idle. What you would wind up doing is compensating by running the other one rich. This won't make much of a difference at idle, but when you get the main metering running then there will be a big difference and some cylinders will be too rich and the other set too lean.

Actually...this is also a problem with just a single carb which has tw idle systems such as the Q-Jet...I'm not familiar with the Edelbrocks you are using...but the Q-Jets have two idle screws. Wht I do is close off one of the screws and cover the primary venturi...lint free cloth stuffed down it works well, but I usually try just blocking it off with one hand while I adjust with the other. After I adjust one idle system I unblock the other venturi and adjust the other one. As long as one of the idle systems is properly adjusted then the other systems can be adjusted properly as well.