Thick Custom Carb Spacer

[mustang6]

Here's a picture I took of a thick custom carb spacer at a swap meet a few weeks ago. I've never seen one quite like this before. It was in a 63 Ranchero.

 

[Anlushac11]

Im not the rocket scientist here but the size of that heater hose into the adapter means to me that hes serious about heating that fuel.

Possibly tryng to vaporize it or he lives in a really cold climate.

 

[250mav]

looks like custom work to me, probably something he drilled out himself

 

[LaGrasta]

It sure does look like a garage-made item. I can't imagine gaining anything by the design.

 

[ludwig]

The clue is his home-fabbed throttle linkage. He has the pedal feed up in the air to clear the headers and then bent up a simple bell crank to run the throttle. I think its that thick to get at the lever arm from his pivot point. Nice piece of beef though. Kinda cool, I think.

 

[250mav]

Im not the rockwet scientist here but the size of that heater hose into the adapter means to me that hes serious about heating that fuel.

Possibly tryng to vaporize it or he lives in a really cold climate.

i dont get the whole heater hose thing either, whats the point? dont you want the incoming fule/air to be as cool as possible?

 

[XFlow_Fairlane]

actually ludwig the early cars had a bellcrank and pull rod like that. when I put on my 5200 I simply hooked the pullrod to the carb and was done as far as linkage.

looks like he has a yf or something bigger than a 1100 on there...guessing it is drilled for a 1.75" carb opening.

 

[Anlushac11]

Im not the rockwet scientist here but the size of that heater hose into the adapter means to me that hes serious about heating that fuel.

Possibly tryng to vaporize it or he lives in a really cold climate.

i dont get the whole heater hose thing either, whats the point? dont you want the incoming fule/air to be as cool as possible?

Depends on what you want to do.

Racers want a cool air fuel mixture to reduce chance of detonation. The average home driver wants the fuel to remain a liquid until it hits the intake and then become a gas. A gas mixes better with the air and burns more completely.

If he lives in a cold climate the heated carb adapter will warm up quickly and help the air fuel mixture mix properly and burn better.

 

[66 Fastback]

The heated intake is quite common. Many old V-8 engines had a crossover port where the exhaust gases heated the bottom of the intake manifold. Many new cars have coolant passages around or near the throttle bodies to heat the incoming air. It helps drivability of the engine in cooler weather and helps keep the gasoline from pooling on the floor of the intake runners.
Doug

 

[ludwig]

Keeps a nice smelly hiss going on that exhaust manifold too when the hoses get a little frayed. Out here in warm country, that intake heater is just a spacer, but then it helps with atomization.

You see that pic in Mustang Monthly a couple years ago? It was a dedicated model for Hawaii with a heater delete plate on the dash.

 

[Lazy JW]

...
i dont get the whole heater hose thing either, whats the point? dont you want the incoming fule/air to be as cool as possible?

Cool air is more dense; the cooler the air the more you can stuff in the engine, the more fuel you can burn and the more power you can potentially make. Drag racers typically want cooler air.

HOWEVER, this is mostly beneficial at WOT, and fuel economy definitely suffers without some heat. Heated intakes are primarily for driveability/fuel economy.
Joe

 

[mugsy]

If his engine is like mine, then the coolant that goes thru the carb spacer also goes thru the heater core as well. The hoses have to be big so you can get the right amount of coolant thru to the core for heat in the passenger compartment.

Remember that as gas expands it cools. If you had an old bicycle pump and pumped up your tires the pump got hot; it was from the compression of the air. Well the opposite is true, as gasses expand they cool. So if an engine is running at 15 inches of Hg, the air has expanded about twice it's normal size. Then add in the evaporation of the gasoline, that too takes heat to change state from a liquid to a gas (think of boiling water which is a change from a liquid to steam/gas). With all that cooling going on, there is a possiblility, in colder climates, of freezing the water vapor in the air into ice.

That's enough of a science lesson for today

 

[shmoozo]

Over in the "Big Block" Six Performance section of the forum discussions about various forms of intake heaters are fairly common. It's quite common to swap to non-factory intakes and either factory EFI exhaust manifolds or headers on the carbed 300's and that eliminates the stock carbed engine's intake heating system which involves heat from the stock carbed exhaust manifold being conducted up into the base of the stock intake manifold. The result of such swaps is often poor driveability and other symptoms associated with poor fuel atomization.

The general cure is to tap off some of the engine coolant circulating in the heater lines and use it to heat either a carb spacer or the bottom of the aftermarket intake.

Clifford actually produces a four barrel intake manifold for the Big Block Six that has a built in water-heating setup to handle this. It costs a bit more than the more commonly used Offenhauser intakes, but eliminates the need to find a way to heat your intake.

I suspect it's a less common topic over here in the Small Block Six section because changing your intake here pretty much requires a head change as well and for most folks that path is a bit more costly than they'd like to travel.