What are the winning guys running as far as brand of carb and carb size in big money footbrake racing today and are they running gas or alcohol? 4150 or 4500? Thanks

The carb is just a piece of the overall puzzle, many good builders out there. We have both, a footbrake car on gas with a 4500 and a footbrake car on alky with a 4150. Both are really,really good, neither is better than the other. Don Garbinsky did the dominator and Rupert did the alky.

Pump gas fuel, Proform carb. Best combo ever, nothing will outdo it.....just make sure carb is from summit or jegs, and run it out of the box, NO TUNING! Them there chinese tunes are the best you can get, and fuel doesn't matter!



Honestly, that's a very general, open ended question with no real answer. If you're decent at tuning, you can take an out of the box carb with either fuel and make it work. You can spend a ton on a custom carb and lose...pick your poison....HS professor said it right, it's just one part of the puzzle....

What you want is the CORRECT carb for your combo, set up for what YOU HAVE.....not what someone else is running.

quote:

Originally posted by 478c:
Best footbrake carbs and gas vs alcohol

There is no such thing, pick a builder and go with it, same with fuel. The winningest racers have skills and knowledge that exceeds their competitors not typically the “best” engineered cars with the best components money can buy that’s why many have and can jump in others peoples cars and win, many times never having sat in the seat before.

Skill and knowledge is first and foremost to win lights in this sport, many win in junk, especially footbrake.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 1320racer,

I know it’s combo specific but I was curious if the majority were on alcohol or if a particular builder was more popular or if they were running smaller combinations that were using 4150 carbs

quote:

Originally posted by 478c:
I know it’s combo specific

It’s actually not, at least when the discussion is footbraked door cars.

That said, I’ve run 4150 carbs on gas on all my engine combos in my door cars for over 3 decades and still run a 4150 carb on gas in my door car. When I was footbraking my 522 made over 900Hp with a Pro Systems carb and was deadly consistent as is my current combo making 1050hp with a ATM Innovations 4150 carb on gas but this combo is not footbraked but easily could be.

As to gas or alcohol, that depends on the combination. As for the carb, nothing beats EFI.

^^^^^^ This Guy KNOWS!!! X2 EFI

You’d have a tough time convincing me of that. I’ll put my cars up against any bracket car with efi for consistency over 8 rounds.

quote:

Originally posted by 1320racer:
You’d have a tough time convincing me of that. I’ll put my cars up against any bracket car with efi for consistency over 8 rounds.

Ed, I believe both carb and EFI (mpfi) to be equally as consistent. Neither one is significantly faster than the other.

Although I have never used a carb on a race engine, those I know racing have at least 2 carbs and some have more. Many have had various different configurations. I’ve read the threads here about carb problems and those that sell and service them. I believe carbs on gas are easier to maintain from what I’ve read and seen. The initial install of a carb vs mpfi is definitely less expensive. 95% of bracket cars are carb and the next most would be MFI.

Imho, the tunability of mpfi cannot be matched by a carb.

Not worrying about cost or et/mph. What is the top of the field (people who are winning)running as far as gas vs alcohol and brand of carb and at what Hp/et are they moving from alcohol to gas (assuming the lower Hp is on alcohol)?

quote:

Originally posted by markemark:
Ed, I believe both carb and EFI (mpfi) to be equally as consistent. Neither one is significantly faster than the other.

Although I have never used a carb on a race engine, those I know racing have at least 2 carbs and some have more. Many have had various different configurations. I’ve read the threads here about carb problems and those that sell and service them. I believe carbs on gas are easier to maintain from what I’ve read and seen. The initial install of a carb vs mpfi is definitely less expensive. 95% of bracket cars are carb and the next most would be MFI.

Imho, the tunability of mpfi cannot be matched by a carb.

Mark, all I’ve ever run is gas carbs except for our junior dragster days. I’ve never had an issue with any carb from a Q-jet atop a 500hp bbc to the 4150 carbs in my door cars atop a 700hp 468, 900hp 522/533, 940hp 565, 1050hp 565, to the dominator carbs on my dragster engines including a 2.125 blade dominator atop a 1100hp 622 and 2.400 blade dominator currently atop our 1300hp 648 in the dragster. These carbs were built by Holley, Pro Systems and ATM innovations. All were bolt on a race and None required any maintenance though I do disassemble my carbs in the off season, clean them and install new gaskets. Couldn’t be easier. Maybe I’m just a better tuner than most bracket racers That said, the few efi setups I’ve seen were anything but impressive compared to their counterpart carb’d combo, especially for the cost.

quote:

What are the winning guys running as far as brand of carb and carb size in big money footbrake racing today and are they running gas or alcohol?

I'll add this .......... Alcohol is waaaaaay easier to hot lap than gas. You'd better have a good trans/converter combo too. Once you get into the later rounds at some of the footbrake only race's the rounds happen pretty damn quick. We've made runs less than 15 minutes apart on hot days. Doable on gas yes, much easier on alky.

The only way EFI makes any sense to me is if you want all the data logging capabilities. Then it might make a little financial sense, but even then you'll be one of a very small handful going that route.


JMO ........

Where's Michael Beard? I believe he's running EFI on his car. He runs the big FB races and most likely knows what the top performers in his races are running.

Bob, bottom bulb, top bulb, it don’t matter round robin in the late rounds is run within minutes of the previous round and means less time to cool down.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 1320racer,

Most of the top builders should be able to build you a good carb. I prefer alcohol but even with gas you really need to learn how a carb works and how to tune especially when footbraking.

Most alcohol carb builders set them up way too fat at idle to cover for off idle stumble. That wastes a lot of fuel, takes longer to warm up and is not best way to tune it. I like to lean down the idle to where it is right. Then I work with pump cams and squirter nozzles to get it where it doing like I want it to. When footbraking if you are leaving at say 2400 RPM you still need to have pump and squirter left when you hit it. How fast your engine revs up makes a difference on how you tune your carb.

So even with a good carb builder it is not just bolt on and go especially for footbraking. IMHO.

EFI has it's place, and is certainly becoming more popular. However, it's also more to go wrong, and a LOT more added expense, for little to no gain....We have guys here running efi, but want to guess who spends the most time in the winner's circle? It isn't the guys tuning with laptops......Since making the switch to mfi, I won't go back to gas or carbs, it's just too simple and foolproof. I didn't even consider EFI, and given the cost of it, it's simply not worth it...

You can disagree all you want, but you'll find more carbs and mfi setups in the winner's circle on a daily basis than any EFI setup, unless the class either mandates it or the bulk of the entries are running it....

quote:

Originally posted by Curly1:
even with a good carb builder it is not just bolt on and go especially for footbraking. IMHO.

Clueless comments from a non footbraker as well as one that has never owned a Pro Systems or ATM carb.

quote:

Originally posted by markemark:
^^^^^^ This Guy KNOWS!!! X2 EFI

The only person who knows, also lays down 7 or 8 time slips, all in a row.

That's how you know who knows, everything else is speculation / subjective opinion / wishful thinking.

One thing I have always heard is that gas is more predictable while methanol is definitely more consistent and will typically stay within a number all day long. Gas may move 2-4 depending on the weather swing's/time of day you run etc.

This is where running gas on days where you run 2-3 days without a time trial each day, can be more beneficial. Not saying alcohol can't be used in this situation, it just requires more knowledge on the weather and how your car reacts with the weather changes. Gas is quite simple, temperature/air density are the two biggest factors in predicting ET with gas. Alcohol depends a lot on humidity, water grains in the air etc.