Tripower setups are really neat, and especially newer styles that came into play in late 50's and 60's. Although I have never built any tripower setups with newer style carb's, I have built a dozen or so older tripower setups for Ford Flatheads, Y Blocks and a couple of 289's..........most of these went into early HotRods and all of them used the Holley 94 carb @ around 150cfm each. The early Holley/Chandler Grove Model 94's were really simple to build but a lot of people just put them on as is and expected them to run great, well it took a little work to make them really run...............the center is the primary as Baddad457 has said, but the secondaries got 12 degree throttle plates and primary got a 5 degree throttle plate. The primary carb kept the choke plate and the secondaries lost theirs..........and you plugged the hole going through the top of the air horn (where the choke shaft went) with 22 caliber shells, then you took the idle circuts and plugged them with JB Weld, and plugged the power valves in the secondaries.............I am leaving out a lot of detail here, but these older tripower setups with just slightly less than 500cfm really made the above mentioned motors come alive............and since the secondaries were just "dumpers", you set the progressive linkage to come in wherever you wanted.........and could pull down some decent gas mileage............but back then gas was a lot cheaper than today......................here is a picture of a setup for a 312Y Block.............................This customer wanted the idle screws, but we screwed them in and plugged the idle circuit in the venturi with JB Weld!
This is like a Ford vs Chevy conversation except Edelbrock/Carter vs Holley I currently have one of each on two different cars. Never personally had a Holley leak unless the floats were stuck or set too high. Did experience a strange leaking problem on a friends Holley last year. But do firmly believe, for all out performance it is Holley. Walk around the pits at any track and see what is being run. But in the end it is personal preference/opinion, both will get the job done. How well is debatable by many. The original question in this thread was answered in the first response.
Part of the reason multiple carb setups got the bad rep back then was running a points ignition. Then adding dual points into the mix only added to the complexity of tuning. I've learned this over the years, 90% of "carb problems" aren't the fault of the carb, it's the ignition.
Brings me to wonder how bad is it if the engine back fires through a tri set up? Does or will it only affect the center carb? Or can it do something to any one of the three?
The center carb is the only one with a powervalve. As for a backfire rupturing that part, I can only say that in my 40 years of messing with Holleys, I have yet to have a backfire rupture a powervalve on any Holley. I'm sure it can happen if Holley came up with a fix, but I've personally never seen it happen, and "back in the day" when I was young, I had plenty of backfires
OK everyone ........... I have dealt with the off topic posts and have reopened this thread to all. It is a good read. Please don't turn it back into a "Ford vs Chevy" type peeing contest ..... Enjoy ................
You are right about part of the problem back then was the ignition system and the other part of the bad rep was that there were very few people who really understood how to rebuild a 97/81/48 Stromberg, or the 94 Holleys. If you see a lot of old pictures the carbs were leaking, people just taking the choke plates out when they didn't need to or taking them out and not filling the holes they left behind in the venturi...............I have a friend with a 347sbf in his 40 Ford that is running a factory tripower, and it runs better than the 4brl he took off. Do you remember the Predator Carburetor?????????????? For those of you that have never heard of this carburetor, take a look at this website..........this carb's claim to fame was that it had no power valve, not jets, no internal gaskets and was pretty much maintenance free.............http://www.predatorcarb.com/performance/carburetor.html
YES! I remember seeing them. I wanted one really bad too. The price was more than the car I had though. So what's your take on them?
Dang Skippy...I remember those carbs. Folks had to rev the motor at stop lights to get rid of the fuel or risk flooding. Frienf of mine had one on a Vette. Or maybe that was a wives tale.
Yea, I remember the Predator carb, It was uglier than the Edelbrock/Carter carb. As for the price of a multiple carb set, I bought mine secondhand via the net. I placed an ad on several sites, knowing that Mustangs Unlimited sold a complete new setup for $1300 (it's gone up since then) I got several offers for original sets in the 2 grand range. Then someone offered me the set I have now for $1000 + shipping. It was a year old and barely used. Had it shipped to me COD for $1100. They're not for everyone, but they're awesome performers. I've been wanting to try dual Holley 350's on an Edelbrock airgap 2x4 since Holley 4bbls won't fit it. I know it may not be any better than a single four, but it's just something to be different.
