anyone have experience with Weber Carbs?

[justasquid]

I was going to put this in the engine section, but its kind of off topic. I have a friend that is resto-modding an early 50's ford, and he has placed in it a straight six from an early 90's Ford truck. He has removed the fuel injection and really has not plans on making it work, but wanted to keep the intake for its looks. Making a new adapter plate won't be a problem, but he wants a carb in place of the throttle body. the only mod to the engine is a slightly bigger cam.

My question is, does anyone know if a 45 dcoe Weber (side draft) will be enough to power the engine? I have tried to research them the best I can, but I can find very limited information about them. I believe they are right around 420 cfm, which would be just about what he needs. The problem I have is I haven't seen any single side draft car setups, and wonder if a single would even work? Extremely small engines are running multiple 45's. I know these carbs can be adjusted to a pretty large range, but I have my doubts as to whether or not the single 45 would be enough.

any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

[showa]

http://www.inliners.org/
I don't have the answer but you might ask here....

[Zanie]

I had a magnacharger with a pair of 45s on my 454 in my 56 chevy. I'm now putting together a setup with a pair of 55s with a wacky low rise plenum to mount on a 8-71.

You could get a single 45 to work on there.
When you see a string of them on an in-line, they are usually set up so every cylinder has its own barrel. That way every cylinder can be adjusted independently; Making each cylinder really achieve its full potential.
Webers are so adjustable that it is really overwhelming:
You've got to pick your venturi size, and your main jet and then your air corrector jet, then you've got to pick idle jet and then there's your emulsion tube, which plots your fuel curve.
If you've got one thing wrong, you can be masking it with another, for example: If you too big of a main jet, you can partially mask it with a too big air corrector jet. but performance suffers.

Trying to find somebody that can help you is tough. I've yet to see a book that spells it out crystal clear (I've purchased 4 books). I got a good starting point on tuning my 45s from a guy at Advanced Engine Management, and muddled my way thru. (That was in the 1990s and now AEM specializes in EFI)
I'm a little leary on tuning my 55s, but that's still a little way off.

For a carb that's going into a plenum to feed a bunch of cylinders, it's not exactly the easiest route. A simple holley or something with a 90 (to point the carb in the right direction) would be a bunch less headaches.
Hopefully somebody can paint a better picture for you.

[justasquid]

Thanks for the info and the suggestions guys.

Zanie. I have tried to steer him down another path, but he is pretty set on making this work. He is retired and loves to tinker, so his desire to make it work and what the finished look will be, its hard to talk him out of it. This is the last part of his build, and to honest, I'm not a fan of inline 6's, but what he has accomplished so far looks pretty amazing. It sounds like its going to be a huge headache, but he's one of those guys that has to be different at any cost, so if it can work, he will find a way to make it work. Your input has helped more than you know, so for that, thank you very much.

[Zanie]

It's a great carb to tinker with. You can change the emulsion tube, main jet, air corrector jet and idle jet thru the "hat" that comes off with a wing nut. It's rediculously fast to change all that stuff. You don't drain the fuel or anything: shut off the engine, wing nut off the hat, a screwdriver to remove the emulsion tube, jet, corrector assembly. then a pair of pliers, pull out the old jet, push in the new, screw it back into the carb. Put "hat" back on and fire it up. It takes longer to walk to the toolbox for the tools.
Getting all the extra jets, and stuff gets pricey.
But!!!! with patience and allot of tinkering you can get closer to efi than any other carburetor.

Getting it "close" enough to run is the tricky part. Off the shelf my accelerator squirters were less than 1/2 as big as I needed; it stumbled something awful....... oh did I forget to tell you you have to pick the size of those too?