carb spacers and related intake modification

I found this bit of info on testing carburetor spacers else ware, but its certainly a good reminder that EACH combo will have different broad tendency's and air flow requirements thus theres no way to accurately predict which carburetor spacer plates will produce the best results, yes with experience you'll spot tendency's bbut theres ALWAYS a few surprises
I have some interesting airflow data. The Team at Jomar (John A and John B) asked us to flow test the leading carburetor spacer plates against their Powercone. Some of you may have already experienced these results but I thought that I would share them with the members of this forum. (with Jomar's approval).
The spacers used for the comparison were the 1" Wilson Tapered Spacer, 1" Super-Sucker, 1" Jomar (4) hole, 1" Jomar open spacer and the 1" Jomar Powercone. A standard 850 cfm Holly carburetor at full throttle position was placed on a special carburetor stand attached to a Superflow 1020 flow bench with a set pressure drop of 20.2" of water which equaled 851 cfm. This was the baseline flow setting used for all the testing. Each spacer was installed on the stand with the same carburetor and the same pressure drop (20.2" of water). An increase in airflow was reported for all the spacers, the Jomar Powercone demonstrated the greatest increase of 10.93%. The test was repeated with all the 1" spacer and a second 1" open spacer. Again, the Jomar Powercone showed the greatest gain with an increase of 14.34%. The test was repeated for a third time with the same 1" carburetor spacers and 2" of open spacer. Again, the Jomar Powercone demonstrated the highest gain with a 16.33% increase which equals 990 cfm. The total increase from the baseline was 139 cfm while maintaining the same pressure drop of 20.2" of water. Afterwards, the baseline carburetor was installed on the test stand and repeated original baseline flow of 851 cfm. Listed below are the results:

Height Carburetor Spacer Type Flow Percent Change
(in) (cfm)
0.0 Baseline 850 cfm Holley carb 851 0.0%
1.0 (4) Holes Spacer 868 2.00%
1.0 Open Spacer 921 8.23%
1.0 Super Sucker 931 9.40%
1.0 Wilson Tapered 937 10.11%
1.0 Jomar Powercone 944 10.93%
2.0 Open Spacer - 2.0" total 945 11.05%
2.0 Super Sucker w/ 1.0" open spacer 966 13.51%
2.0 Wilson Tapered w/ 1.0" open spacer 969 13.87%
2.0 Jomar Powercone w/ 1.0" open spacer 973 14.34%
3.0 Open Spacer - 3.0" total 948 11.40%
3.0 Super Sucker w/ 2.0" open spacer 976 14.69%
3.0 Wilson Tapered w/ 2.0" open spacer 986 15.86%
3.0 Jomar Powercone w/ 2.0" open spacer 990 16.33%
 
More practical experience with carb spacers.

This year I put a new motor in my Altered and needed to have a way of slowing it down to run an index class, and meet minimum dial at Division 6 tracks. I don’t like the old bolt under the throttle method because my carb guy – Gary Williams – tells me that because the blades aren’t fully open you get inconsistent results. So who am I to argue with Gary?

Looking around there are a couple of popular methods of doing this. One a spacer with removable plates with varying hole sizes like a NASCAR restrictor plate, and another with infinitely adjustable sliders that close off the ventuis. I decided to go with the adjustable venturis. EZ-Plate System. I chose the EZ because I didn't want a bunch of plates to keep track of, and something I could change quickly in the lanes.

Nice piece of machine work. However if you have been using spacers forever and you look down the holes of this thing you go into convulsions. Because they have four nicely machined plates that close off the venturi, the one inch spacer is open in the middle. You look at that and there is nothing smooth about it. I thought that it would kill at least .20 just because it looked like a turbulent nightmare. Guess what, with a .5 inch phenolic spacer under it for heat, it ran just as good if not better than the other spacers. Go figure.

It just goes to show, you never know… You have to try it to see if it works on your combo. You could have taken my next pay check that this would have been slower…. Not.
 
Its also functioning as an anti reversion plate.
No double fuel metering through carb booster nozzles.
 
Restriction is often helpfull.
Never convince 99.9999% of Forum guys that fact.
Just want 400-1000 cfm airflow through each intake port.
 
87vette81big said:
Restriction is often helpfull.
Never convince 99.9999% of Forum guys that fact.
Just want 400-1000 cfm airflow through each intake port.
adding an anti-reversion baffle to a 18"-24" longer collector on open headers with the internal pipe about 1/2 the collector length tends to help scavenging on some engines
collectortuningtube.jpg

ITS GENERALLY NOT THE AIR FLOW RESTRICTION,
the plate may cause,
but the equalization of the fuel air ratio distribution,between ports
and the increase in the individual intake runner ports air flow speeds
and better control over reversion pulses that can and frequently do cause air flow to momentarily reverse direction thru the carbs venturies
 
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yes you did! I was just trying to help some of the newer guys get a better grasp on the concepts




Best Carb Spacer Cheap Horse Power- Spaced Out
Written by David Vizard on January 1, 2006Contributors: Johnny Hunkins, David VizardA Carb Spacer Can Be The Cheapest Horsepower You'll Ever Buy. Here Are Six Tips To Help You Choose The Best One.
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Carb spacers have been around almost forever and still, their modus operandi is largely shrouded in mystery. Part of this lack of understanding stems from the fact that they are so easy to test for function that it is often easier and quicker to run a test than to figure out how they might (or might not) work on any given application.There are six factors governing carb spacer function. We will take these one at a time and see how each influences the output of an engine.

Tip One-Spacers Enhance Access To Carb CFMIn many instances, a given intake manifold and carb combination is more suited to low and midrange power than it is top-end output. Part of the problem here is usually that such setups are two-plane manifolds with inadequate carburetor cfm for the size of engine involved. Any time a two-plane manifold is used, any particular cylinder sees only two barrels of that carburetor through which to draw air. Adding an open spacer between the intake manifold and a carb allows any particular cylinder to see all four barrels of carburetion. This move, in essence, turns a two-plane manifold into a very crude single-plane manifold. In so doing, it invalidates the strong point of a two-plane manifold, namely its good vacuum characteristics and strong midrange output. These assets come about because there is no robbing by one cylinder from another since, in a 180-degree two-plane manifold, no induction events overlap.

Many stock GM manifolds from the Quadrajet carb days (and there are still millions of these around) can benefit greatly from the use of an open spacer. But simply adding a spacer can create its own flow problem. Air exiting the carburetor enters the plenum created by the spacer. So far so good, but when it has to exit the mini-plenum created by the spacer, it must negotiate the sharp manifold face from the throttle-bore edges to go down into the manifold. Having such sharp edges can negate the potential airflow advantage of using the spacer in the first place. The key here is to provide a radiused entry into the manifold in order to make the most of the increased access to the carb CFM. This could be ground onto the manifold, but in the example shown, it was put on the spacer to conform to race regs. The nearby sidebar on pg. 62 shows how a composite 1-inch spacer made of four .25-inch-thick gaskets was made to pay off during the testing of a dirt car motor built to highly restrictive rules.

Tip Two-Spacers Increase Air DensityWhat the tests in Sidebar 1 don't reflect is the change in air density due to the fact that a spacer made of insulating material can reduce carb temperature. The reason is that the tests were carried out on an intake manifold, which, due to some serious insulation, ran at virtually ambient temperature. In most instances this would not be the case because an as-manufactured intake manifold would run much hotter. By using a spacer with good insulating properties, carburetor body temperature can be considerably reduced. This in turn means that the fuel is cooler, and as such, less turns to a volume consuming vapor. With more fuel in fine droplet form instead of vapor, there is more room in the intake manifold for the induced air. Because an insulating spacer reduces carb temperature, it leads to an increase in volumetric efficiency. Whether this pays off on the dragstrip or not, is questionable. It all depends on the time the carburetor has had to heat-soak. In practice we find that it takes about a minute for cool fuel from the tank to overcome the carb body heat it has soaked up from previous runs. On the other hand, if you're running a road course, there's enough time for the carb to cool down and deliver extra power. How much extra power? That's somewhat of a variable, but certainly on a typical 350hp to 400hp engine, 2 to 4 lb-ft of extra torque throughout the rpm range is common, and numbers as high as eight are not unheard of.

Tip Three-Spacers Help Displacement-to-Plenum Volume RatioWhether you're contemplating running a tunnel ram or a single four-barrel open-plenum race-style intake, there is a certain optimum plenum-volume-to-cylinder-displacement ratio for the rpm range involved. Most intake manifolds, especially single four-barrel ones, are manufactured with a plenum volume deliberately made too small for the typical engine they are going to be put on. This is done so that those manifolds will also suit the smaller displacement versions of whatever engine they are intended for. For instance, a Victor Jr. has a plenum volume better suited to about a 300-inch engine rather than to the 350-inch engines they are most commonly used on. This being the case, a spacer brings the plenum volume into line with what we may expect would be required for a 350-inch engine. From this you can see that for any given open-plenum manifold, the bigger the engine, the greater the spacer thickness needs to be to generate the plenum volume required.

Looking back on some old dyno tests done with a 302-, a 350-, and a 400-inch small-block Chevy, all with Victor Jr. intakes, illustrates the trend. On the 302, some marginal gains were seen with a .5-inch open spacer, but a 1-inch spacer cut output, especially midrange torque. On the 350, best results were found with a 2-inch spacer. Its use produced up to 6 more horsepower at peak and as much as 14 more at 750 rpm over peak power. On the 400-inch engine, a stack of three 1-inch spacers produced the best results. Here the engine was so desperate for extra plenum volume that peak power went up by over 11 hp.

The optimum plenum volume is not only interconnected with engine displacement, but also the rpm the engine makes peak power at. If all the aforementioned engines had peak-power rpm at say, 1,000-rpm higher, they may have needed to have as much as 1 inch of extra spacer to access that power.

Tip Four-Spacers Increase Carb CFMIf designed as one of its primary functions, a carb spacer can be used to increase the cfm delivered by the carb. It does this without necessarily affecting the carb's ability to adequately atomize the fuel. An example might serve best to show how to use a carb and a flow-enhancing spacer. Let's say the engine needed to have 780 cfm. Rather than use a 780-cfm carb and an open spacer, an engine builder may elect to use a 750 carb with the spacer shown above. This can augment the flow, thus giving a 750 carb the same or similar airflow capacity when on the engine. The usual result here is that the engine will make the same top-end output, but have a better low and midrange due to having a little more active carburetor. Another example of the use of this type of spacer is when race rules prohibit the use of a carb any more than a certain cfm. For instance, there are many race classes, both on the dragstrip and circle/road track events that call for a maximum of 750 cfm of carburetion. Adding a flow-enhancing spacer often allows such a carb to deliver another 15 or more cfm.

Tip Five-Use A Spacer To Suppress Flow ReversionPressure pulses generated by the valve opening and closing events and tuned lengths of both intake and exhaust can often produce unwanted flow reversions in the intake. These offending flow reversions considerably upset the carb booster function. What happens is that as the flow reversal goes through the booster in the opposite direction, it draws fuel. When the flow about-faces and returns to the carb via the booster, it draws yet more fuel. This results in the mixture-during the reversion event-becoming very rich, thus killing a good deal of horsepower. There are a number of means to suppress reversion. One of these is to build something approaching a mechanical diode into the intake system. That is, the system will have good flow into the engine but bad flow out of it. Some spacers are designed to do just this. They are normally used on very highly tuned engines that have monster cams and turn equally monstrous rpm. A Pro Stock-style engine would fall into the category we're dealing with here.

There is, of course, one type of reverse-flow that is not that uncommon that no amount of anti-reversion redesign is going to deal with. I'm referring to a nitrous backfire. Unless steps are taken to the contrary, a nitrous backfire can easily bend all the throttle plates in the carburetion system. You may think you've built a system that guards well against a backfire in the first place, but it only needs one mishap to cause a nitrous backfire. Keith Wilson of Wilson Manifold fame came up with a simple solution to this problem: spacer plates with burst panels.

Since we've arrived at the subject of nitrous injection, it's well worth mentioning that (for the most part) nitrous systems make more horsepower with a larger volume under the nitrous spray bar. Although it is highly dependent on the type of plate system used, it has often been found that spray bar systems tend to work best when they are two or more inches away from where the runners start in the manifold plenum.

Tip Six-Spacers Improve Fuel Atomization And DistributionThe spacer above successfully serves in two roles: Firstly, it has strong anti-reversion capabilities. Secondly, by putting appropriately positioned cutouts in the intruder tubes, it can redistribute fuel to achieve more even air/fuel ratios amongst the cylinders. The lengths of the anti-reversion intruder tubes shown in the drawing are a little exaggerated in length to make a point. In most cases, their length would be between two thirds and half their respective diameter. The way these intruder tubes function to redistribute the mixture is simple: Adjacent to the runner of whichever cylinder is lean, a triangular cutout is made in the intruder tube. In practice, the cutout acts like a magnet on the wet-flow fuel on the walls of the intruder tube. This causes more fuel to exit in the area of the cutout than around the rest of the periphery of the tube. It is this extra fuel that feeds the potentially lean cylinder to bring the mixture around to something near correct. This style of spacer can only be used with manifolds having a tall plenum. If you try using them in a short-plenum manifold they can introduce their own set of mixture distribution problems. For the most part, this type of spacer works best when used on top of a conventional 2-inch or more open spacer.

Q-Jet QuickieShown below is a stock iron Chevy Q-Jet manifold as was used on millions of small blocks. Note the sharp edges making up the corners between the carb bore holes and the carb mounting pad. Without the aid of a radius, these are really bad for airflow. In this case, race rules prohibited manifold airflow mods, so a .25-inch-thick gasket with the edges (arrow) radiused was used to ease the problem.

This gasket was then used with three open gaskets (i.e. one large, near square hole) to form one composite spacer 1-inch-thick (the rule limit). A larger 1.5 to 2 inches might have been better. As the dyno shows, without the benefit of the radius at the manifold face, the simple open spacer (O/Spr) did not work. With the radius four-hole gasket against the manifold and three open gasket/spacers on top (Rad/Spr), there was a worthwhile gain over the no-spacer baseline.

CHEVY Q-JET WITH GASKET SPACER
B/line O/Spr Rad/Spr B/line O/Spr Rad/Spr Gain Tq. Gain HP
RPM TQ1 TQ2 TQ3 HP1 HP2 HP3
4,000 386.4 380.8 387.6 294.3 290.0 295.2 0.9 0.7
4,250 386.3 384.4 387.2 312.6 311.1 313.3 3.7 3.2
4,500 376.3 373.2 380.0 322.4 319.8 325.6 1.0 0.9
4,750 371.6 368.9 372.6 336.1 333.6 337 3.6 3.4
5,000 358.7 355.9 362.3 341.5 338.8 344.9 1.7 1.7
5,250 347.7 342.2 349.4 347.6 342.1 349.3 3.0 3.2
5,500 333.1 328.5 336.1 348.8 344.0 352 1.9 2.1
5,750 318.7 314.1 320.6 348.9 343.9 351 2.3 2.7
6,000 297.2 292.5 299.5 339.5 334.2 342.2 3.4 4
6,250 279.8 276 283.2 333 328.5 337 3.6 4.4
6,500 258.6 255 262.2 320.1 315.6 324.5 2.4 2.5
Ave. 337.7 333.8 340.1 331.3 327.4 333.8 2.5 2.6
Wide OpenShown below are the results of a test I ran a while back on one of my mule motors. This used a spacer style as per the Ultra Pro piece shown in the photo. I am using this as an example because it demonstrates that if the engine really needs more plenum volume, it really pays off to supply it.

Not only are the results of the before and after test worth scrutinizing, but the overall figures obtained from this 355-inch small-block Chevy. Although only a hair off 530 hp and a very strong 466.5 lb-ft, this was no high-dollar race engine. In practice, it had enough low-end capability to be used on the street as it would pull cleanly down to 2,000 rpm. Parts for this engine included .030-over pistons from Ross that had previously seen use in two of my previous engine builds. In spite of running the equivalent of at least one Daytona 500, they were still in near-perfect condition. These were equipped with Total Seal rings and delivered a 12:1 compression ratio. The heads were a set of relatively old pieces from Dart, which had undergone basic home porting and worked like a charm. The cam (280-seat duration single-pattern) was a well-used entry-level race roller that Comp did for me 15 years ago. Ditto for the valvetrain. With the equally old Comp stainless steel rockers, the delivered valve lift was about 625 thousandths. For induction, my slightly reworked Holly 750 carb (which flowed about 800 cfm) was used.

This sat on a Victor Jr. that Keith Wilson personally reworked for me years ago, and it has yet to be beaten for power on engines in the 500-plus-horsepower range. Although it does not apply to the same degree with a Q-Jet, both Holley and Barry Grant Demon carbs require the mixture to be re-optimized after a spacer is installed. This is especially so if the plenum volume has substantially increased. Usually when a spacer is installed, the mixture will lean out to the extent that the main jets will need to be increased two to maybe as much as four sizes.

355CI SMALL-BLOCK CHEVY
NO SPACER VERSUS SPACER
RPM TQ1 TQ2 HP1 HP2 TQ DIFF. HP DIFF.
2,500 340.7 322.2 162.2 153.4 -18.5 -8.8
3,000 352.6 347.6 201.4 198.6 -5 -2.8
3,500 377.1 371.9 251.3 247.8 -5.2 -3.5
4,000 420.7 422.4 320.4 321.7 1.7 1.3
4,500 459.7 464.3 393.9 397.8 4.6 3.9
5,000 462 466.5 439.8 444.1 4.5 4.3
5,500 457.2 464.3 478.8 486.2 7.1 7.4
6,000 443.7 448.2 506.9 512 4.5 5.1
6,500 423.1 427.9 523.6 529.6 4.8 6
7,000 380.4 392.7 507 523.4 12.3 16.4
7,500 305.8 318 436.7 454.1 12.2 17.4
 
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by the way, wilson1 thanks for the insight.

as for the kn filter with the filter top piece, everyone i know that runs one seems to like it, and chose it based on the premise of increasing the filter area when they had less hood clearance than could otherwise fit a sufficient sized filter (everyone would love to fit a 4-6 inch tall filter unser the hood but sometimes thats impractical) so i havent heard any negative reports about those
 
steelcomp posted these pictures

00468.JPG
00468a.JPG
00468b.JPG
00468c.JPG
00468d.JPG
00468e.JPG

you just have to admire porting work thats well done!
larger intake manifold plenum volume TENDS to allow higher rpms
throttle body efi acts like a carb, as the injectors dump fuel/air in the plenum
throttlebw2.jpg


throttlelbw1.jpg

throttlelbw2.jpg

\
fuel_injector_info.jpg

vgd5.jpg


0412em_18_z+cylinder_head_porting+.jpg

1102sp.jpg

direct port fuel injection has a separate, individual fuel injector feeding each cylinder, the plenum essentially runs mostly dry air free of fuel

directportd.png


 
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Wow. I never would have imagined that plenum would come out looking that good
after looking at the first few pics. Is that really the same intake?
Someone has some really good grinder skills.
 
Awesome information. Thanks for sharing. I am thinking about to use a 1/2" 4 hole spacer as heat isolator and to see how the transfer from idle to off ilde will change. The second thing is that I want to switch from Edelbrock Performer RPM to a Air Gap RPM Manifold.
If I do the manifold swap I plan to do the porting job by myself.
 
Nice Read today Grumpy.
Eddie and me haven't built any Custom large plenum volume racing intakes like You have in the past.
We have built several air to water turbo intercooler for Chicago street racers and drag racers. Highly effective dropping IAT's.
Have to build headers ground up for his race car in the future.
Entire floor removed to build the 25.3 NHRA Cage.
The Old Kooks Racing big tube 2 inch primary 3-1/2 collector no longer will work fit clear right.
Ed dropped the floor centerline down.
We have not built race headers like you have either.
1st time for everything!
Huge projects each in 2019 for Race Car !
 
I want Chad Speirs to Race Port full the Eddie Torker 1 intake for the Trans Am.
Man that guy does awesome work and results to back it up Grumpy.
 
I found this bit of info on testing carburetor spacers else ware, but its certainly a good reminder that EACH combo will have different broad tendency's and air flow requirements thus theres no way to accurately predict which carburetor spacer plates will produce the best results, yes with experience you'll spot tendency's bbut theres ALWAYS a few surprises
Effective carburator spacers add more intake plenum volume.
The tests shown here showed a substantial airflow improvement.
Thus the 'VE Volumetric efficiency of the engine is improved WOT especially under load.
Also makes the engine run lean on fuel unless the carburator jetting corrected and as I found myself recent weak borderline emulsion circuits not calibrated for Racing use.
They do work Grumpy.
Take a lack luster intake manifold and help it perform stellar better.
 
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