Carburetor (pronounced kahr-buh-rey-ter
or kahr-byuh-yey-tor)
(1) A device for mixing vaporized fuel with
air to produce a combustible or explosive mixture for use in the cylinder(s) or
chambers of an internal-combustion engine.
(2) In the slang of drug users, a water
pipe or bong; a device for mixing air with burning cannabis, cocaine or other narcotics (rare since
the 1970s and then usually in the form “carb” or “carby”).
1866: From the verb carburate, from the Italian carburate
(to mix (air) with hydrocarbons”), an inflection of carburare & the feminine plural of carburato. As a transitive
verb carburet was used mean “to react with carbon”. Strangely, the exact origin of the word is
uncertain but it was likely a portmanteau of carbon (in the sensor of a clipping
of hydrocarbon) + burette (a device for dispensing accurately measured
quantities of liquid). The construct was
carb (a combined form of carbon) + -uret (an archaic suffix from Modern
Latin) (uretum to parallel French
words using ure). The earlier compound
carburet (compound of carbon and another substance; now displaced by carbide)
was from 1795 and it was used as a verb (to combine with carbon) after 1802. The use with reference to the fuel systems used
in the internal combustion engines of vehicles dates from 1896. Carburator,
carbureter and carburetter were
the now obsolete earlier forms and the standard spelling in the UK, Australia
& New Zealand is carburettor. Carb &
carby (carbs & carbies the plural) are the the universally used informal
terms (gasifer was rare) and although most sources note the shortened forms
weren’t recorded until 1942 it’s assumed by most they’d long been in oral use. Outside of a few (declining) circles, “carb”
is probably now more generally recognized as the clipping of carbohydrate. Carburetor & carburetion are nouns; the
noun plural is carburetors.
Some carburetor porn
One carburetor: 1931 Supercharged Duesenberg
SJ with 1 x updraft Stromberg (left; the exhaust manifold the rare 8-into-1 monel "sewer-pipe") (left), 1966 Ford GT40 (Mark II, 427) with 1 x
downdraft Holly (centre; the exhaust headers were referred to as the
"bundle of snakes") and 1960 Austin Seven (later re-named Austin Mini 850) with 1 x
sidedraft SU.
Except for some niches in aviation, small
engines (lawnmowers, garden equipment etc) and for machines where originality
is required (historic competition and restorations), carburetors are now
obsolete and have been replaced by fuel-injection. There is the odd soul who misses the
challenge of tinkering with a carburetor, especially those with the rare skill to
hand-tune multiple systems like the six downdraft Webers found on some pre-modern
Ferraris, but modern fuel injection systems are more precise, more reliable and
unaffected by the G-forces which could lead to fuel starvation. Fuel injection also made possible the tuning
of induction systems to produce lower emissions and reduced fuel consumption, the
latter something which also extended engine life because all the excess petrol which
used to end up contaminating the lubrication system stayed instead in the fuel
tank.
Two carburetors: 1970 Triumph Stag with 2 x
sidedraft Strombergs (left), 1960 Chrysler 300F with 2 x Carter four-barrel downdrafts on
Sonoramic cross-ram (long) manifold (centre) and 1969 Ford Boss 429
with 2 x Holly four-barrel downdrafts on hi-riser manifold.
Until the 1920s, all but a handful of
specialized devices were simple, gravity-fed units and that was because the
engines they supplied were a far cry from the high-speed, high compression things
which would follow. In the 1920s,
influenced by improvements in military aviation pioneered during World War I
(1914-1918), the first recognizably “modern” carburetors began to appear, the
conjunction of adjustable jet metering and vacuum controls replacing the
primitive air valves and pressurized fuel supply mechanisms allowed engineers
to use a more efficient “downdraft” design, replacing the “updraft” principle
necessitated by the use of the gravity-feed.
Between them, the “downdraft” and “sidedraft” (a favorite of European
manufacturers) would constitute the bulk of carburetor production. The next major advance was the “duplexing” of
the carburetor’s internals, doubling the number of barrels (known now variously
as chokes, throats or venturi). Although
such designs could (and sometimes were) implemented to double the capacity (analogous
with the dual-core CPUs (central processing units) introduced in 2005), the greatest
benefit was that they worked in conjunction with what was known as the “180o
intake manifold”, essentially a bifurcation of the internals which allowed each
barrel to operate independently through the segregated passages, making the
delivery more efficient to the most distant cylinders, something of real significance
with straight-eight engines. Few
relatively simple advances have delivered such immediate and dramatic increases
in performance: When the system was in 1934 applied to the them relatively new
Ford V8 (the “Flathead”), power increased by over 25%.
Three carburetors: 1967 Jaguar E-Type (XKE)
4.2 with 3 x sidedraft SUs (left), 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/C with 3 x downdraft
Webers (centre) and 1965 Pontiac GTO with 3 x downdraft Rochesters.
Advances however meant the demand for more
fuel continued and the first solution was the most obvious: new manifolds which
could accommodate two or even three carburetors depending on the configuration
of the engine. Sometimes, the multiple
devices would function always in unison and sometimes a secondary unit would
cut-in only on demand as engine speed rose and more fuel was needed, an idea
manufacturers would perfect during the 1960s.
World War II (1939-1945) of course saw enormous advances in just about
every aspect of the design of internal combustion engines (ICE) and carburetors
too were improved but in a sense, the concept had plateaued and it was
fuel-injection to which most attention was directed, that being something which
offered real advantages in flight given it was unaffected by G-forces,
atmospheric pressure or acrobatics, working as well in inverted as level flight,
something no carburetor could match.
There is a quirk in the history of the triple carburetor Jaguars, a configuration first offered on the 1957 XKSS after have been used on various versions of the factory's C-Type (XK120-C) & D-Type race cars. The first general-production Jaguar XK-Six to use the configuration was the XK150S in 1958 but when the last of the six-cylinder E-Types left the line 1971, that was the end of the line for the triple carburettor Jaguar. It is however misleading to suggest the XK150S, E-Type and Mark X/420G were the only series-production Jaguars with triple carburetors because on some cars during the 1950s & 1960s, the factory fitted a smaller electromagnetically controlled “auxiliary carburetor” which augmented the main pair, making starting easier. The unusual arrangement acted as a choke but it was a complicated solution to a simple problem and, while performing faultlessly in testing, in the real world with gas (petrol) of varying quality and in different climatic conditions, it sometimes proved troublesome and there were owners who gave up and installed a conventional choke.
Four carburetors: 1973
Jaguar E-Type (S3) with 4 x sidedraft Zenith-Strombergs (the Jaguar V12 was
unusual in that the carburetors sat outside the Vee, left), Ford Cross Boss
intake manifold (developed for the Boss 302 used in the Trans-Am Mustangs in
1970, technically the Autolite carburetor is a single “in-line downdraft four
barrel” but the engine interacted with it as if it was being fed by four
individual units, centre) and 1965 Ford GT40 (X1 Roadster 1, 289) with 4 x
downdraft Webers (right, again with the "bundle of snakes" exhaust
headers).
After the war, like the chip manufacturers
with their multi-core CPUs in the early 2000s, the carburetor makers developed
four-barrel devices. In Europe, the
preference for multiple single or two barrel (though they tended to call them “chokes”)
induction but in the US, by the early-1950s just beginning the power race which
would rage for almost two decades, for the Americans the four-barrel was ideal
for their increasingly large V8s although sometimes even the largest available wasn’t
enough and the most powerful engines demanded with two four-barrels and three
two-barrels. It was in the 1950s too
that fuel-injection reached road cars, appearing first in a marvelously
intricate mechanical guise on the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W198)
Gullwing. Others understood the
advantages and developed their own fuel-injection systems, both mechanical and
electronic but while both worked well, the early electronics were too fragile
to be used in such a harsh environment and these attempts were quickly abandoned
and not revisited until the revolution in integrated circuits (IC) later in the
century. Mechanical fuel-injection,
while it worked well, was expensive and never suitable for the mass-market and
even Mercedes-Benz reserved it for their more expensive models, most of the
range relying on one or two carburetors.
In the US, Chevrolet persisted with mechanical fuel injection but
availability dwindled until only the Corvette offered the option and in 1965
when it was made available with big-block engines which offered more power at
half the cost, demand collapsed and the system was discontinued, the big
engines fed either by three two barrels or one very large four barrel.
Other four barrel devices
Reggie
(Reggie Bannister (b 1945) with Regman Quad-Barrel Dwarfcutter in Phantasm
(1979).
Four (and more) barrel weapons have long been common in fixed or mobile
structures (warships, gun batteries etc) but are rare in anything hand-held because
of the increases imposed in size & weight as well as the heat generated. In fiction (notably video games and horror
films) they’re a popular prop and the four barrel shotgun in Don Coscarelli’s
cult classic Phantasm (1979) was among the more memorable. An ad-hoc creation born of the need for more
firepower (very much in the vein of the “…going to need a bigger boat” philosophy in the
Film Jaws (1975), a line apparently improvised during filming because it
appears neither in Peter Benchley’s (1940-2006) 1974 novel nor the original screenplay),
it was made by welding together two double barrel shotguns and named the “Regman
Quad-Barrel Dwarfcutter”. It
was that sort of film and freaks attracted to the design (which does seem hard
to resist) have created Nerf-guns in the style.
Although rare, hand-carried, multi-barrel firearms have a history dating
back centuries and provided the intended application is appropriate, they can
be both effective and convenient, a number of manufacturers offering three and
four barrel shotguns, all of which presumably include a section in the owner’s
manual covering “recoil management”. Very much in the spirit of those who took
advantage of the modular construct of the early (and anyway already sometimes lethal)
two-stroke Kawasaki triples (H1, H2, S1, S2 & S3; 1969-1975) to build a
48-cylinder version, nine-barrel(!) shotguns have been made... just in case.
Custom four
barrel Vierling longarm by Johann Fanzoj (1790) of Ferlach, Austria.
The
four-barrelled longarm was configured with a side-by-side double rifle (calibre:
9,3/9,3x74R), paired with an over-and-under shotgun (gauge 12/12/76). Built to a customer specification to shoot
four (plus two) times in sequence with “hot” barrels, the Vierling used
H&H-type sidelocks with automatic ejectors.
An impressive example of the gunsmith's art, this was not a Phantasmesque
welding job but an intricate design which had to regulate the rifle barrels
two-times-two so they would shoot together to the same point of impact, in
sequence. First, the 9,3 barrels
discharge, then by pushing the barrel selector forward, the shooter continues
with the 12-gauge barrels with automatic ejection of the shotgun cartridges facilitating
quick reloading… just in case.
Even before we had Greta Thunberg (b 2003) to show us the errors of our ways, exhaust pipes were rarely admired and associated mostly with noise, smell and filth but for some small sub-sets of humanity (such as owners of C2 (1963-1967) & early (1968-1972) C3 (1968-1982) Chevrolet Corvettes and Shelby American AC Cobras (1962-1967 and the many replicas since), they're a fetish but it's on motorcyclists the pipes and their sometimes convoluted paths exert a particular fascination; for them exhaust pipe porn is a real thing. The manufacturers and after-market suppliers came to understand the attraction and over the years concocted some memorable and occasionally bizarre systems but the Italians in particular have managed sometimes to arrange things in a way which reflects the nation's artistic sensibilities, studious critics acknowledging the contribution. When the Guggenheim Museum in New York staged The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition (October 2001-January 2003), one featured machine was the MV Agusta F4, and there was a focus on the way its four pipes exited rakishly from the tail section.
English “Duck’s
foot” four-barrelled pistol with walnut slab-sided butt and silver-wire scroll
inlay, said to date from the early nineteenth century. Note the angle of the barrels and thus the
wide field of fire.
Collectors
also prize bizarre and ambitious designs such as the four-barreled “duck’s foot” pistol. Historians have questioned whether these
weapons really were manufactured in the Georgian or Regency eras and some
suggest they were a product of entrepreneurial Victorians creating “relics”
which played into prejudices about just how bad were what were then the “olden days”. The legend is these were early crowd-control
devices with which some worthy (squire, mill or mine owner etc) could deter the
mob (revolting peasants, disgruntled factory workers, whatever) which would
have been inclined to take a chance against someone armed only with a
single-shot pistol. There’s nothing in
the historic record to suggest riots and strikes were ever “controlled” with
such things but the Victorians of the late nineteenth century were well aware
they were the first generations to benefit from a standing, regulated
constabulary so the need for such things would have seemed at least
plausible. The legend is they were also carried
by naval captains in case of mutiny and while the Admiralty apparently never
issued them, it’s not impossible some officers bought their own… just in case.
Five carburetors: Le Monstre's 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) Cadillac V8 (left) with its unusual (though not unique) five-carburetor induction system; the layout (one in each corner, one in the centre) is a "quincunx", from the Latin quīncunx. Le Monstre ahead of Petit Pataud, Le Mans, 1950 (right). At the fall of the checkered flag, the positions were reversed.
Le Monstre was a much-modified 1950 Cadillac which ran at that year's Le Mans 24 hour endurance classic. one half of a two car team the other being a close to stock 1950 Cadillac coupe. The idea behind the five carburettors was that by the use of progressive throttle-linkages, when ultimate performance wasn’t required the car would run on a single (central) carburettor, the other four summoned on demand and in endurance racing, improved fuel economy can be more valuable than additional power. That’s essentially how most four-barrel carburettors worked, two venturi usually providing the feed with all four opened only at full throttle and Detroit would later refine the model by applying “méthode Le Monstre” to the triple carburettor systems many used between 1957-1971. As far as is known, the only time a manufacturer flirted with the idea of a five carburetor engine was Rover which in the early 1960s was experimenting with a 2.5 (153 cubic inch) litre in-line five cylinder which was an enlargement of their 2.0 litre (122 cubic inch) four. Fuel-injection was the obvious solution but the systems then were prohibitively expensive (for the market segment Rover was targeting) so the prototypes ended up with two carburettors feeding three cylinders and one the other two, an arrangement as difficult to keep in tune as it sounds. Rover’s purchase of the aluminium 3.5 litre (214 cubic inch) V8 abandoned by General Motors (GM) meant the project was terminated and whatever the cylinder count, mass-produced fuel injection later made any configuration possible. Motor racing is an unpredictable business and, despite all the effort lavished on Le Monstre, in the 1950 Le Mans 24 hour, it was the less ambitious Petit Pataud which did better, finishing a creditable tenth, the much modified roadster coming eleventh having lost many laps while being dug from the sand after an unfortunate excursion from the track. Still, the results proved the power and reliability of Cadillac’s V8 and Europe took note: Over the next quarter century a whole ecosystem would emerge, crafting high-priced trans-Atlantic hybrids which combined elegant European coachwork with cheap, powerful, reliable US V8s, the lucrative fun lasting until the first oil crisis began in 1973.
Intake manifold
(5 x 2 barrel) for the first generation (1969-1964) Oldsmobile V8 with
Rochester-style carburetor mounting flanges.
A tiny lunatic fringe of the hot
rod community did in the 1950s make use of Le Monstre's five-carburetor quincunx atop V8
engines and they were more ambitious still, using two barrel carburettors so
that means ten throats for eight cylinders which sounds excessive but, as
configured, the arrangement did make sense.
They generally used standard intake manifolds, modified to the extent of
retaining the central unit in its stock positing while installing the other
four in an extended X, all five often the familiar Rochester 2GC two-barrel. What all this plumbing and hardware provided
was an early form of the variable fuel metering now effortlessly delivered by
modern electronic fuel injection in that the centre unit meant relatively
economical operation and civilized characteristics for urban use while the four
outboard took over under heavy throttle application, each located directly over
an intake port for optimal distribution of the fuel air mix. Synchronising multiple carburetors can of
course be challenging when there’s two or three so five sounds worse but the
configuration did simplify things because only the central one had to be
adjusted for idle and part-throttle use while the outer four were tuned only
for high throughput. There was however
the need to engineer a mechanical throttle linkage operating in two planes and
while this became for years a common fitting on systems with three two barrels
or two four barrels, with five in a quincunx the machinery was bulky and
intricate and given the advantages of five turned out to be marginal at best,
the idea never caught one and the systems are now just curiosities to be admired
by those who adore intricacy for its own sake.
1953 Ford
X-100: With roof panel retracted (it was “targa” before told us there were Targas
(left), the five carburetor apparatus atop the 317 cubic inch (5.2 litre)
Lincoln Y-Block V8 (centre) and the built-in hydraulic jacking system in use
(right).
It wasn’t
only the one-off Le Mans Cadillac or crazy hot-rodders who took the quincunx
path, the apparatus appearing also on the 1953 Ford X-100. In the years to come, such a thing would be
called a “concept car” but that term didn’t then exist so Ford used the more
familiar “dream car” and that does seem a more romantic way of putting it. Reflecting the optimistic spirit of the early
post-war years, the X-100 included a number of innovations including the use of
radial-ply tyres, a built-in hydraulic jacking system, a rain-sensor which
automatically would trigger an electric motor to close the sliding plexiglass
roof panel, a built-in dictaphone, a telephone in the centre console and the convenience
of heated seats and an electric shaver mounted in the glove compartment. Some of the features became mainstream
products, some not and while the “variable volume horn” wasn’t picked up by the
industry, one did appear on the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100; 1963-1981) although
that was a rare supportive gesture. It
was also an age of imaginative labels and Ford called their quincunx induction
system the “Multi-Plex”; while the engineering proved a cul-de-sac, the name
did later get picked up by multi-screen suburban cinema complexes. For the X-100, Ford used a central Holly two-barrel
while the outer four were Ford model 94 two-barrels. X-100 still exists and is displayed at the Henry
Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
1969 Mercury Marauder
X-100. In 1969, the blacked-out trunk (boot) lid and surrounds was standard on X-100 and optional on other models. In 1970 it became a “delete option” (an option which seems often to have been exercised).
In a number of quirky coincidences, the name X-100 seems to once have
been an industry favourite because as well as the 1953 Ford “dream car”, it was
the US Secret Service’s designation for the 1961 Lincoln Continental parade
convertible in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was
assassinated in Dallas, Texas. One might
have thought that macabre association might have been enough for the “X-100”
tag to not again be used but, presumably because the Secret Service’s internal
codes weren’t then general public knowledge, in 1969 Ford’s Mercury division
released an X-100 as an up-market version of its second generation (1969-1970)
Marauder. Notionally, the X-100 was a
“high performance” version but its 365 (gross) horsepower 429 cubic inch (7.0
litre) V8 was an option in lesser priced Marauders which meant the X-100,
weighed down by the additional luxury fittings, was just a little slower than
the cheaper models with the 429. The
market for “full-sized” high performance cars was anyway by 1969 in the final
stages of terminal decline and although an encouraging 5635 were sold in 1969,
sales the next year fell to 2646 and the X-100 was retired at the end of the
1970 and not replaced. Most bizarre
though was project X-100, a US$75 million (then a lot of what was at the time borrowed money) contract in
1943 awarded to Chrysler to design, machine and nickel-plate the inner surfaces
of the cylindrical diffusers required to separate uranium isotopes. Part of the Manhattan Project which built the
world’s first atomic bombs, Chrysler built over 3,500 diffusers used at the
plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and many were still in service as late as the 1980s. Not until after the first A-bomb was used against
Hiroshima in August 1945 did most of the X-100 project’s workers become aware
of the use being made of the precision equipment they were producing.
A “slingshot
dragster” with a GMC 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) straight-six and five Stromberg
97 carburetors. The machine is typical
of the “garage-built” cars used in drag racing in the 1950s & 1960s and
this one reputedly won its class at the Daytona Beach Winter Nationals in
Florida one year in the early 1960s.
Although on a six cylinder engine the use of five carburetors may sound as counter-intuitive as five on a V8, as anyone from the long unfashionable school of structural-functionalism will explain, if something exists in its niche, that's because it fulfils some need. Five carburettors did, for use in certain forms of motorsport, appear on some six cylinder engines and
although the Mcgurk Company made many, the best known manifolds
were those produced Howard Johansen’s (1910-1988) Howard Automotive for the 302
cubic inch (4.9 litre) GMC in-line six (1952-1960). Built originally for heavy-duty military
operations, the GMC 302 was famously robust and, especially when equipped with the
Wayne or Howard 12-port heads, was capable of reliably producing impressive power and
prodigious torque. At the time, on the
basis of cost-breakdown, it was an attractive option because it easily could be made to out-perform both Ford’s outdated Flathead V8 and most of their (frankly disappointing)
Y-Blocks while more modern designs like Chrysler's Hemi and the Cadillac V8 were
much more expensive to buy and develop. The
GMC 302’s inherent torque curve was, for drag-racing purposes, actually better
than many V8s and they were for years a popular choice until in 1955 the
appearance of Chevrolet’s epoch-making small-block V8 meant the universe
shifted and there were by then anyway cheap, used Chrysler Hemis aplenty. Despite that, they retained a following and
remained class-competitive for almost another decade.
Howard five carburetor manifold. Before there was the internet, there were magazines and mail-order catalogues, the latter using essentially the same principle as Amazon today.
The reason five
carburettors on a six cylinder engine made sense was the math of the flow rate
was ideal and it avoided the more complex construction a manifold’s runners
would have required were three two barrels fitted. What the builders used was a formula which calculated
the optimal cfm (cubic feet per minute) flow for the fuel-air mix, the critical
variables being engine displacement and rpm (crankshaft revolutions per
minute). It was a particular application
of the math because while it was understood an increase in the cfm number
beyond the optimal would increase power at high engine speeds, that was both
wasted effort and counter-productive because the gain would come at the expense
of low and mid-range torque which is what the dragsters needed to maximize their
initial acceleration and thus attain the best ET (elapsed time) over the quarter-mile. This was exactly the reason why Ford’s Boss
429 (1969-1970) with its huge intake ports was not a success on the drag strip: it was designed to run for
hours at full throttle on the NASCAR Ovals something at which it excelled though those big ports meant it would later take to turbo-charging like few others.
Because the Stromberg 97’s flow-rate could be tweaked to about 162 cfm,
five would deliver an aggregate 810 which was close to ideal and the significance of Howard Johansen’s manifold
was the intake runners were precisely machined to ensure a constant flow of the
fuel-air mix, cognizant of the firing order, the 90o internal turns created
to generate sufficient turbulence to attain a perfect fuel-air mix. Because of the math, although a six-carb
manifold could have been designed, adding a sixth Stromberg 97 would only have
added weight and compromised the desired torque curve.
Six carburetors: 1979 Honda CBX with six
sidedraft Keihins (left), 1965 Lamborghini P400 Miura (prototype chassis) with
6 x downdraft Webers (centre) and 1970 Ferrari 365GTB/4 (Daytona) with 6 x
downdraft Webers (right).
It was the development of these big four
barrels which in the US reduced the place of the multiple systems to a niche
reserved for some specialist machines and even the engineers admitted that for
what most people did, most of the time, the multiple setups offered no
advantage. The research did however
indicate they were still a selling point and because people were still prepared
to pay, they stayed on the option list.
There were a handful of engines which actually needed the additional
equipment to deliver maximum power but they were rare, racing derived units and
constituted not even 1% of Detroit’s annual production. Paradoxically, the main advantage of the
multiple setups was economy, a six-barrel (ie 3 x two-barrel) engine running
only on its central carburetor unless the throttle was pushed open. As it was, the last of Detroit’s three-carb
setups (a reputed seven 1972 Plymouth Road Runners with the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 so equipped produced in September 1971) left the line in 1971, the configuration unable easily to be engineered to
meet the increasingly onerous exhaust emission rules. In the UK, Jensen were advised a batch of the the now unlawful (in the US) 440s was available for sale and noting the things could still be sold in other places, purchased 232 as what was planned as the first tranche to be fitted to their Interceptor SP (Six-Pack), a new top-of-the-line model to replace the intriguing but troublesome FF. For all sorts of reasons, the "SP venture" didn't end well and the company never took up the option to buy a second tranche.
Eight carburetors: 1955 Moto Guzzi 500cm3 Ottocilindri V8 Grand Prix motorcycle with eight Dell'Orto sidedrafts. One carburetor per cylinder was long common practice in motorcycle design and the two 1959 Daimler V8s (2.5 & 4.6 litre, 1959-1969 and designed along
the lines of a motorcycle power-plant) were intended originally to be air-cooled
and run eight carburetors; the production
versions were water-cooled and used two sidedraft SUs. The very thought of keeping eight carburetors synchronized would alarm most but clearly such intricacy doesn't scare the Italians because, in 1967, the Cooper-Maserati Formula One (F1) team, seeking that elusive quality of increased power and sustained reliability did ponder bolting a dozen Webers to what was their by then antiquated (pre-historic in F1 terms) 3.0 litre V12. To the eternal regret of those who value mechanical complication for its own sake, that idea, like the notion of using three spark plugs per cylinder, never left the engineers' sketch pads; rational thought prevailed and fuel injection was adopted.
Carb porn: 1930
Ford Model A “Wade Coupe” with Chrysler 392 Hemi Stroker V8, fitted with eight Stromberg
97 single barrel, downdraft carburettors.
In the age
of over-the-counter fuel injection systems and a still lively supply of high-cfm two and four barrel carburetors, there is of course no need for even
big-displacement V8s to be fitted with eight carburettors but it is occasionally
done as a visual treat: it’s carb porn.
This hot rod was built in the last decade and features eight Stromberg
97 carburetors mounted on an Edelbrock intake manifold atop a stroked 392 cubic
inch (6.5 litre) Chrysler Hemi V8 with four-bolt main bearings, attached to a Muncie
M22 four-speed manual transmission. All
those components were staples of the hot rod community in the 1960s
so it’s a delightfully nostalgic agglomeration which will be capable of
impressive performance although it should be used as a show-piece rather than exploiting
its capabilities because the adherence to the way things used to be done
extended to the chassis, the suspension using transverse leaf springs with the
front an implementation of the legendary “suicide” apparatus (where the front
axle sits ahead of the spring mounts meaning in the unlikely event of catastrophic
chassis failure, the frame can, at whatever speed the vehicle is travelling, “dig
into” the road surface). In that spirit,
braking is drums on all four wheels although, unlike the original 1930 Model A,
they are hydraulically activated. It was
a thoughtful and well-executed build and at auction in September, 2025, it sold
for US$98,500.
Lindsay Lohan admiring Herbie’s carburetor in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).
Before
fuel-injection was late in the century used for some, most Volkswagen Type 1s (Beetles)
were fitted with a single Solex carburettor although there were exceptions, some
more expensive and higher performance (such things are relative) variants in
Europe, Mexico and Brazil using twin Solexes.
Additionally, because it wasn’t difficult to swap in the twin
carburettor units used in the Karmann Ghia (Types 14 & 34) and Type 3 cars,
many were upgraded and over the years there were literally dozens of kits to
create multi-carburetor induction systems using equipment from a variety of
manufacturers including Solex, Weber, Dell'Orto and Kadron (Solex-Brosol).
