Replacing Carb on 351 Cleveland

[salhi_aemr]

Vehicle: 73 Mustang Mach 1 351 Cleveland 2V with intake conversion to 4v

Hello all,

I posted earlier this week about my 73 Mustang Mach 1 with 351 Cleveland running bad on drive and sputter and hesitating on hard acceleration as well as beginning of acceleration along with black smoke from exhaust and rich fuel smell too.

I took to shop and it turned out I have a bad carburetor (Holley 80457-8) on it with bad power valve. The carb is old and am down to three options and I would like advises.

1- Rebuild carburetor ( not leaning too much to it since its old )

2- Get another Holley 80457-8 just like the old one but new.

3- Get Edelbrock 1406.

I am leaning more toward number 3 since the car is not being used in racing. its a street car also the Edelbrock is easier to work on and tune than Holley.

I would like also to remove old one and put the new carb myself. Any ideas or advises on how to do it right. I have never done it before but want to save money because shop wants $400 to do it.

I will post images of old carb to see what parts I need from it. I read online and it should be easy conversion from Holley to Edelbrock, plug and play but I just want to confirm with 71-73 Mustang owners.

Thanks all.

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[c9zx]

The Edelbrock requires an additional adapter for the Ford kick down lever. I'm not sure about it accepting the idle solenoid.

If the power valve is indeed bad, get a new power valve and bowel and jet block gaskets and change the valve. The hardest part is cleaning the old gasket material off. You don't even have to remove the carb from the intake.

It won't cost much and won't take a bunch of time to do. Just my opinion. Chuck

 

[Mikes73]

I have an Edelbrock 1406 on my cleveland and love it, it is very easy to tune and work on. As previously mentioned a transmission kickdown adapter (edelbrock part#1483) and slight modification to the kickdown rod will be needed for an automatic transmission if you want to retain the kickdown feature. Not really that hard to extend the kickdown rod, I just welded in a 2" section on mine to extend it. There are a few ways to go about this so I wouldn't worry about it to much.

 

[Don C]

I agree with Chuck, get a Holley rebuild kit, they come with good instructions. Get the kit with the blue gaskets, they don't stick. You can also find a lot of additional information on the Holley website

https://www.holley.com/support/

Even though there are a lot of parts, they aren't that difficult and are a good place for a vintage car owner to start learning about what makes cars work and test your mechanical skills.

 

[John J]

I put a 1406 on my car and it was a huge improment. You have to order a couple of extra parts to make it work on a 351 cleveland. I got it from Summit they had the best price that I could fine.

John J

 

[4Vforever]

If you are looking at installing it yourself the easiest way would be to rebuild your carb or get one the same as you have everything there to make installation easier. If you are still not to sure about it, take heaps of pics for reference, it really is easy to replace a carb and if you do everything in reverse order of taking it off, then it should be a breeze. As others have said the Edlebrock is a decent carb and some extra parts are required, but it's still a pretty simple affair to set it up. Also noticed with your carb that you have one with non adjustable floats (they're ok and keep things simple) but personally, if you were to replace yours with one that's similar, I'd be getting one with adjustable floats (like I said just a personal choice) At the end of the day it's your money and your car, do what you feel comfortable doing and just remember, if you run into any problems, put up a post asking for help and people here are only to happy to help sort out your dilemma. Just out of curiosity, is the $400 your mechanic wants to charge, is that for rebuilding the carb as well, or just putting one on and tuning it to suit. Anyway good luck with it all.

 

[salhi_aemr]

Thank yo sir, the shop wants $400 just to replace it with another one. Not even rebuilding it. I figured out they were trying to rip me since they saw the car is fully restored they were probably like lets rip him off lol. and also they were so slow not even one car in the shop and they pretended to be busy and want more time ( typical shop procedure ). I think I will end up doing it myself. 4Vforever you think getting a new one the same is better than rebuilding it. Mine is old. Also mine now is Holley 84507-8, When you said adjustable floats, do you have the part number for that same Holley? also what does the adjustable float do, and one last question if you look at my pics you will notice the idle solenoid, what does that do and do I need to install it on new carb? Thanks for your help


If it have to do anything with AC, my AC is not working now ( needs charge or another compressor )

 

[Mister 4x4]

I have an Edelbrock 1406 on mine, and it's awesome.

I can't help with the C4/C6/FMX kick-down mechanism, since I went with an AOD transmission and the TV cable is slightly different. In fact, my engine is nowhere close to stock anymore - it's been completely rebuilt with lots of goodies from Edelbrock, CompCams, Crane Cams, ARP, Melling, Canton, and others.

This was the first fire-up, and all I had done was install the carb, hooked everything up, and hit the key. There was some tuning to be done, naturally, but the video was pretty much an out-of-the-box deal.



Hope that helps!

 

[salhi_aemr]

Well i just realized I have a gift card from Summit Racing that I haven't used and it came in handy and in Christmas time, I bought Holley 0-80457SA brand new. Looking forward to install it and will write my review after.

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[4Vforever]

Hi there,

Good on you for having a go yourself, because $400 to swap a carby over is robbery. If that's the carby you are getting that's in that pic then that's the one you want. Your question about adjustable and non adjustable floats is fairly easy to see. If you look on the top of your front and rear fuel bowls, you'll notice the raised area on them are flat, if you look on the carby you've ordered you'll notice on that raised area there's a nut with a flat screw on top of it, that is for the adjustability of the floats. You shouldn't really need to muck around with that sort of stuff as they're usually fairly right out of the box and usually only need minor tweaking to make them run right. There is instructions for set up as well as any trouble shooting you may come across. As I said if you have a dramas, just put up a post on here and someone will be able to point you in the right direction to help solve your problems. Also Holley have a tech line that you can access. As for the idle solenoid, my car has never had it on, but mine has been wrapped up in electrical tape (don't know why, was like it when I bought it) so I see no need for it as most carb changes I've seen have never ran with them. Anyway take your your time with it, take pics for reference and all should go well for you, it really is a pretty straight forward job and once you're done, you'll wonder why guys who are supposed to be mechanics wanted to rip, I mean charge you $400 for a relatively simple job. Anyway good luck with it, not that you'll really need it

 

[salhi_aemr]

The you 4Vforver, I think it will be an easy job especially if I take pics or mark wires and vacuum hose, yep $400 rip off people. I will post pic once installation is done and review performance on new carb comparing to old one. Thanks again.