[Pontirag]

Barry Grant is a real person? I thought he was like Ronald McDonald or Col. Sanders or that wendy's chick

[goquick]

Yep, real person. He started out modifing Holley carbs for racers in both circle track and drag racing. I believe he even did some road race carb stuff. I have some old car mags with his small ads about modifing your carb to your racecar and engine specs.

Tom V. realizes the frustration for store owners and the avg. "I think i can bolt this alum. thingy on and get better performance" type person. Then that new thingy doesn't run right or hardly at all, and the guy is now stuck with a brand new used non working carb. And he can't imagine that shiny new carb was full of shavings. It's that guy who says screw this car thing and I'm going fishing. And our hobby because of poor practices by a company just lost another person.

[machine shop tom]

Originally Posted by Tom Vaught

Quote:

................
Engine builds are a whole different discussion. This deal DID start about carbs RIGHT?...............

Tom V.

I apologize, point taken. I was just trying to point out that "new" doesn't necessarily mean "ok and ready to bolt on", be it carbatooter or engine or engine component.

tom

[Ron H]

I may be one of those numb people who buys a shiny, though I prefer non shiny, part with the expectations of it being made correctly and tested. Now whether it performs or not is up to me to determine, is it the right part for my combo or the wrong piece all together or have I tuned it to my combo?
It is quite another for me to have to know how to masterfully build and rebuild carbs to determine whether or not it was made correctly. Or have to completely disassemble it to ensure that it is clean and ready to bolt on. They sell it as, ready to bolt on....

[Tom Vaught]

I never called anyone Numb or dumb or less than any other person. I have lots of friends who will not touch a carb but I also know a lot of them who do touch the carb. Maybe that is why I "Fix" a lot of them too.

The deal is trash in the carb AGAIN, or basic quality stuff vs a potential misbuild due to a drilling issue, etc.

JMO

Tom V.

[Tom Vaught]

I never called anyone Numb or dumb or less than any other person. I have lots of friends who will not touch a carb but I also know a lot of them who do touch the carb. Maybe that is why I "Fix" a lot of them too.

The deal is trash in the carb AGAIN, or basic quality stuff vs a potential misbuild due to a drilling issue, etc.

JMO

Tom V.

[Cliff R]

Several years ago we hired some help and tried to get caught up some....and we did. I was able to turn out more work, but worked at least twice as hard trying to keep track of the hired help, and correct their mistakes. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, our overhead went up and our bottom line figure(s) never budged.

Basically, we could increase production, but couldn't make any more money by the time we took out wages for the additional help. I never could get anyhone in here that had enough interest in really learning how to do this sort of stuff. We hired mechanics/ "hobbyists" at first, but they quickly get caught up in spending all their spare time working on their own projects, or those for their "buddy's". The best employee we had was a construction worker, who wanted a break from framing/dry-wall for a while. He did really well......when we could get him to show up. He wanted Monday's and Friday's of (he actually showed up sometime Monday's, but usually wasn't up to par till well into the afternoon!), and paid by Wednesday or Thursday. I offered him unlimited hours, I think the best week he ever had was about 30 hours. We played this thing for about 8 months and he decided to go back to building houses. This story seems to be very commonplace these days in the workforce, at least from the feedback I get from other business owners.

The unfortunate part of doing specialty work is that it requires exact precision, and careful attention to detail. The slightest mistake at any point and the end result is ALWAYS less than satisfactory. Building high performance carburetors, regardless of make, brand, type, etc is one of the areas of this hobby that requires catering exactly to the customers needs. Most customers have become their own "design engineer(s)", and come up with very specific/unique combinations of parts. Buying a carburetor that is going to be DEAD ON right out of the box is typically NOT going to happen. Almost any mass produced part/product will involve some custom tuning in several areas. This is exactly why our products have a very good success rate, certainly not perfect, but the amount of troubles we experience are less than 1 percent, actually, last time I checked about 1 unit in 300 sent out.

Just from what I know about this area of the hobby, carburetors, is that it would be highly unlikely that any company could mass produce products and not have numerous problems in mulitple areas. The ONLY way a company could have a near perfect success rate, is to build each and every unit to exact specifications, based on the intended application, and test them prior to shipping/installation.

It is my opinion, that overall, BG does very well. I also highly commend them for coming on to this Forum, despite the "heat", and address customer issues/complaints. At least they are taking the feedback well, and I have no doubt using it as a learning tool to help improve the product line. I really don't know much about their manufacturing facility, but would suspect that more troubles would be found/corrected if more ramdom units were pulled from the production line and dyno tested, as well as completely stripped down and inspected/checked for accuracy, etc, from the FWIW department. As mentioned earlier, a running engine will tell more about the carb and it's capabilities, than any other sort of inpection/testing........Cliff

[greyno3]

I have never worked on a demon or a holley. I bought a speed demon 750 for my new chevy truck 383 stroker and the front part of the carb leaked like crazy and the float bowls were way off. Fianlly got it dialed in though.

I still have another 750 in the box and a holley street avenger 870.

[455_regal]

Its sad, I took the $400 demon off and put a $10.00 Qjet back on, I went out to start it tonight and it flooded out...wouldnt even idle, shut the car off and there was gas everywhere...AGAIN....pulled the needle and seat and what do I find...another shaving..looks like a sliver from something threaded.

[Nickv]

I have a BG 825cfm carb. Other than having to play with the jetting for about a week to get it tuned right, it's been trouble free.

[sharkbite]

I love my BG, never had ANY problems with it. I'm a little disappointed Summit doesn't sell there stuff any more, but I can always buy it from Jegs.

[cerino2000]

Man I wish I would have read this post before today. I have a BG demon Jr sitting on my car right now. My Q jet was performing fine, but leaking at the butterfly shaft so I decided to replace it. The JR (725 CFM) actually will work with my shaker, however, the carb itself is well....I can't put it nicely ....it's a POS. It sure looks good, and it really liked my wallet but it will only run off the accelerator pump. Rear float was fine out of the box but the front took some adjusting but I got it smack in the middle right now too. the only way i got it there was to keep the car running for a little bit and then let it die and go out and see what the float was at. Then fire it, keep it running off the accelerator pump again for a little bit and check it again. Did this until I got the float set right.

I have made the 110 mile round trip to our fairly local speed shop (Doug Herbert Performance) every day since Saturday and it looks like I will be going back again tomorrow provided I call them on the phone and they say they will even take it back.

Man am I dissappointed. I had the choice to order a Q Jet that I would have tomorrow but since I decided to go this route, I won't be able to do squat till Friday now. Guess it will be a few more days before I finally get to drive this thing and I will likely be out some bucks if Doug Herbert says you installed it gotta send it to BG. If that's the case, I will be getting the Q Jet, and selling this POS on ebay at a loss. What an expensive mistake.

I expect when I drop this kinda cash that I can bolt it on and go. Not make the trip, make all the mods that it takes to get it to work on my setup (modify linkage, fuel line path etc), and then only find out that it's not going to work and I get to undue all of the changes I made to the car to accomodate the carb.

Sorry guys, "Send it to us and let us fix it" doesn't work for me. I've been dying to drive this thing since I fired it and the carb was the last thing I needed to get in order before I went on my maiden voyage. That's why I dropped the money on a brand new carb. Told myself "Ya, that's a lotta change but at least it's new and you'll know it will work". Ya...right.

Carb acts like the fuel passages are clogged up. Regardless of the reason, that shouldn't be happening on a brand new carb.

[cerino2000]

here's a little more information. I took the carb back and the speed shop refunded my money. We pulled out another identical carb and started comparing them. Here is a pic of the carb I had:



Here is a pic of another unit, same store, same model:



From what I am told my the guy at the speed shop, the bigger demon carbs have an opening or something in the center of the base plate where you see the arrow. The Jr's should not have this, instead they would be machined smooth like you see in the second one (sorry for the crappy pics, it was a camera phone). It looks like in the carb that I have that either that is the wrong base plate or they are interchangeable. The center is the same style as that of the bigger carbs on the one I had. I don't know what the relevance is but it makes me wonder if the base plates are totally different between the jr and the larger carbs to the point that if you put the larger one on the jr as was on mine, nothing would work such as anything but the accelerator pump because maybe the ports were not lined up or something.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? They tried to get me to take the new one but I really didn't want to make the 110 mile trip yet again if I had the same luck as with the first carb.

[speedshopmike]

kudos to the speedshop for doing right by you.

[goquick]

Good speed shop to swap it out for you. Most say "take it up with the manufacturer.

[theYman]

Some of the later demons have a special option to help with idle quality.Its called idle eze. Looks like your carb had that baseplate minus the adjustment mechanism.
http://www.barrygrant.com/demon/default.aspx?page=14

I bought my mighty demon 850 off of racing junk. The previous person bought it new but couldnt get to idle so they sold it cheap. I discovered through looking at the tech info on www.barrygrant.com that the carb had its secondary and primary metering blocks swapped. Not sure if it left the factory this way or a backyard buddy "fixed" it.

Good luck.
Trent

[Formula jg]

UPDATE

Originally this thread was started by Shaker when he rectified several issues with my new Mighty 825. Within 2 weeks I had it back on the car and it ran like a beast.

As this thread grew I suppose Demon caught wind of the bad rap and it was suggested they call me to redeem themselves.

They did and we had agreed to repair the boosters which were no fully staked in their respective venturi over the winter (Shaker did not tamper with the boosters and although it ran great he did advise to have them restaked incase they come lose).

The 825 main body and base plate was UPS'd to Demon Jan. 18/07 and after almost 6 months they finally admitted the carb was lost. Last night I rec'd a Mighty 850 main body and base plate in compensation.

See attached pics.

These pics were forwarded to Demon - No response.

Is this a reject casting?

[steve]

I'd be pissed if someone dropped that crap at my door.

[David Holmberg]

I'd have to question their QC after looking at those pictures.
I'd call back and keep talking until they get the right person on the phone, that's just wrong.

If that didn't work, try showing up at a NHRA event and take it right to their Tech trailer...

Good luck!

[Formula jg]

The next guy on the todem pole is Barry Grant himself.

They included a fuel line and some gaskets, but heck if I knew this was what I was gonna be sent I would've never bothered with this booster repair in the first place.

WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDA