Was just wondering why people say buicks need more fuel?? I can maybe see the design of a stock head combustion chamber 30+ years ago. But in today's day and age of ta/edelbrock heads. Especially for mostly street cars people putting 1000 cfm carbs on them?? Why? Am I missing something?? Any engine is a air pump?? Certain c.I.and rpm needs certain about of cfm?? For us mostly street cars that live between 2-4k a 850 or 1000 cfm carb is recommended?? I'm thinking of putting a custom 750 carb that flows 900 cfm on my big block. To me sounds like would be best of both worlds?? On my small black Ford was 347 inches max rpm was 6500 I had a out of box holley 750 and would go low 10s? And ran great on the street. Would like to hear some feedback. Thx
Not saying it needs more fuel . it needs more air. Cfm of a carb is about the air that can flow thru it not the fuel.
Add the fact of your 347 had a 750 and a 455 is over 100 cid bigger now you need 100 cubes worth of air added to the 750. What where the specs on the 347- boosted/nos?
And static displacement is not the same as dynamic displacement. Camshafts, heads, intakes, headers/manifolds all play a roll in how much air the engine can actually ingest, and in some cases well designed builds will allow the inertia of the fuel air mix to actually exceed the equivalent of the static displacement worth of fuel and air. I think it has to do with the tall narrow ports and port velocity. Takes better advantage of larger carburetors.
I've been racing Buicks since 1968,and I'll give you a technical discertation: "They just do":grin: gary
^^^THIS^^^ Haha. I dont have a scientific answer for you, but I have seen it first hand. Dont compare a small block Ford or Chebby to a BBB (or even an SBB for that matter), it doesnt translate at all. A 650 worked great on my fairly stout SBC, and choked a not-as agressive SBB to death. Swapping to an 800 on the Buick made all the difference in the world.
It would have been nice to have had a Buick Big Block evolved to the same extent that they did the 231 V-6. What GM eventually got out of the 3800 was amazing considering that it essentially was a SBB with 2 cylinders removed. It just goes to show that the essential design was a good one. The big Buicks were designed to breathe; (a correction from the older Nailhead,) but they were choked a bit by a generic carb that was designed to provide both power and overall driveability with a (for the time) respectible enough fuel economy. So, as long as you keep your foot out of the carb, you could conceivably get a respectible 20-22 mpg out of one, - which isn't that far off of a modern pickup.
