[shaker455]

I've allway's wondered why Demon's don't seem to respond to tuning as well as Holley's and I think I've found the answer....

I've Seen many post like this about Barry Grant's Demon Carbs having severe qualitly issues and I alway's used to recomend to people on the board as I own two models myself and had no real issues besides a missing needle under a squiter.

No more! I recomended a Mighty Demon 825 to one member as I have one myself and it's worked great as it's the biggest of the small carbs but over the course of last summer he went thru no less than three 825's and they all had qualitly issues and BG would not stand behind there product!

Number three was sent to me from it's owner for it's qualitly issues as it was stumbling & backfiring.....a brand new $500. dollar carb!

First thing I noticed was a gap between the boosters and the mainbody because the boosters were not swedged aginst the mainbody in there nest where they belong.

Taking it apart both CNC machined billet metering blocks had burrs at the ends of the emulsion track cutting thru the gasket and allowing fuel to travel outside the track and to other areas.

The six emulsion holes per block that were supposed to be .031" diameter appears to been drilled with a dull drill that wobbled off center and measures .035" each.

Piss poor machining & quality Barry Grant and that's comming from a machinist!

Holley carb's do have cast blocks and although they don't look as flashy as Demons there quality and dimentions are right as advertised resulting in a unit that responds to tuning properly......

Has anyone seen this as well?

[INJUNTOM]

i've heard good and bad about them.

took a chance, and bought one from a member here with about 100 miles on it, and supposedly made 550HP on an engine similar to mine....wanted to try an 850, and the price was right.

we'll see when i get it

[BVR421]

good luck, it seems to be a 50-50 crap shoot with BG carbs, expensive cores that need rebuilding out of the box

[INJUNTOM]

Originally Posted by BVR421

good luck, it seems to be a 50-50 crap shoot with BG carbs, expensive cores that need rebuilding out of the box

that's what i hear - Summit quit selling them....

the one i'm getting is supposed to be dyno proven already

[Cliff R]

I've had a few in the shop for "tuning", and found numerous minor troubles with all of them. The Edelbrock RPM 850cfm Q-jets are just as bad, if not worse. I would imagine that they are assembled by hourly workers, not carburetor specialists or machinists, so the troubles get by them.

Some of the Edelbrock Q-jets were really bad, holes drilled missing passages, different airbleeds, idle tube sizes etc, on the same unit, others were pretty decent. I have no doubt that the lack of quality control and expensive price tag led to the demise of the Q-jets from Edelbrock?.....Cliff

[Larry Navarro]

I've had minor issues with the Demon but Jeff worked them out.
It's a shame their quality can't be better with todays automated tooling.

[6567GTO]

Originally Posted by Cliff R

I've had a few in the shop for "tuning", and found numerous minor troubles with all of them. The Edelbrock RPM 850cfm Q-jets are just as bad, if not worse. I would imagine that they are assembled by hourly workers, not carburetor specialists or machinists, so the troubles get by them.

Some of the Edelbrock Q-jets were really bad, holes drilled missing passages, different airbleeds, idle tube sizes etc, on the same unit, others were pretty decent. I have no doubt that the lack of quality control and expensive price tag led to the demise of the Q-jets from Edelbrock?.....Cliff

Remember mine Cliff!
I'll never buy another Demon.

[Cliff R]

Larry, if they would test the carburetors prior to sending them out, most of the troubles would be caught before they were shipped. We test EVERYTHING set up here, even though I'm pretty confident they are going to work. It's rare these days if something gets through with a problem. Last time I checked, our come-back rate was one unit in about 300......Cliff

[Cliff R]

Phil, yep, I remember yours, what did you ever do with it?.....Cliff

[Half-Inch Stud]

Thus far, every used Q-Jet I've found has had pretty good passages and deburred.

High-level manager here used to intern at Rochester in the late 60's, and did production line inspections of the Q-Jet castings. Said it was noisey, cold, boring and cold Lucy Ball job.

[SCOTT ESTERLE]

Cliff you just jinxed yourself. I think i spelled that correctly. I'm sure if i didn't someone will correct me.

[455-4+1]

Mine was a total piece of junk !.

The biggest problem I had with them was the fact that they advertise every unit was "Wet Flow tested" to try and catch any of these problems.

Mine hade the little inspection card (photocopied) by employee #77 or something. Every thing checked out fine on the card !!!

I think #77 must have been away that day and no one noticed

I supose if you threw it in the river, it would get wet and flow along for a while before hitting the bottom. Maybe thats what they were meaning ????

Hmmmmm, I just got an idea

[Rugratman]

They suck. I sent mine back and I know for a fact that carb was used when I got it.
Full of shavings in the float bowls. Debris in the needle and seat. Changed jets from stock (?).
Floats that stuck, which had gas coming out like a fountain thru the air horn.

And they are flow tested before it's boxed? No F' n way. Almost $500.00
Expensive eye candy. Problem is Summit won't take them back, they need to be sent back to BG for repair's...On a new freakin carb.
They (BG) says, they are good and tuned right out of the box, So put it on your engine, put gas thru it and it's now used. Even if the car never fired, because the sh*t in the bowls clogged eveything up. I got screwed and Summit was stuck in the middle. I don't blame them a bit for dumping them.
And losing Summit as a distributer for your high performance parts is a good sign the company is a mess.
So ask someone at Summit/Jegs, How many come back? How many satisfied customers over Holley's VS. BG?
They are the only company that I had manufactered a rotten product, in all the stuff I have ordered for my car...Over $40 K easy. ( 4 carbs too!)
My Holley and now Holley(s) are superior in use and quality.
My .02 cents.
Oh' and just try calling their tech dept.
I hope they fold.
This is the only parts company that makes me mad, I also am one to sing a company's praises when they do good. Check our BBB board.
I feel better now.

[shaker455]

Very interesting post guy's and thanks for responding.

Today I repaired the metering blocks by pressing in a .040" thick brass plug in the E-hole wells with the correct hole size and deburred the blocks passages with an exacto knife.

I'm going to test it but with the boosters hanging out so far I wouldn't be surprised if they seep fuel from a lack of proper seal and enough material swedged to the mainbody.......I'll try to re-swedge them or replace if nessary.

Also I forgot to mention the accel pivot arms are all bent and out of alignment....NICE!

Larry N,
Did you get all you tuning done on your 850 and if so how's it run?

[Ryche400]

A buddy of mine bought two a few years back. I turned on both fresh engines with them and had no problems. Of course, this was about 5 years back. One was a 750 and the other a 850. The only problems they had were gas varnishing up from lack of use. He still brings them to me once in a while to open them up and clean them out. But had no quality issues. He has no complaints when he drives the car...

[Formula jg]

That's my carb that Shaker is trying to correct and I just want to publicly state that he has never refused to help me, he even offered to do a house call (I live in Canada). Not many guys like that around here. Thank you Jeff.

Some of the issues are truly unbelievable, my 1st Mighty Demon was purchased 11 months ago and not one of the 12 emulsion holes had be drilled and the secondary metering block was installed on the primary side and vice versa. It got worse with the 2nd Mighty and ultimalely the 3rd which is the one Shaker is currently working on.

I made many long distance calls to Demon and just like a previous member posted their Tech guys are of no help.

What really disturbes me is that each time I exchanged the carb at the local parts supplier where I bought it (a buddy works there), which by the way is unacceptable to Demon because their warranty policy requires you to return the deffective carb directly to them, I didn't because I just spent over $900.00 CDN on this brand new carb and they wanted me to pay the shipping, thats another $100.00 CDN (via FedEx). This ultimately created a headach for my buddy at the parts store, but thats another story.

My point to is that I wrote a letter, stated the deficiences and inserted it in the box which the carb came in and also mailed a copy directly to Barry Grant's attention, I did this each time I returned a carb. I have never recieved any response to this day.

I have no doubt that once Shaker is done with this carb it will be much better than I ever expected, but I still wish the carb would have been stolen during shipping to him, I would get my insurance money and start from scratch again.

If I could do it all over again I would have Shaker build me a carb, for sure.

[shaker455]

Formula jg,
I repaired, assembled & tested your carb on my car tonight and it now lives up to it's name!

I found so many things wrong that in short any part that had a hole was oversize and junk including all the screw in airbleeds, stock IFR's, curb and transition passage in mainbody was obstructed by burrs.

[Larry Navarro]

Kudos Jeff,
Everything is good with it. Haven't had a chance to do alot of driving lately but using the vacuum gage and tuning with it, the idle and and overall operation is good.
Its amazing how sensitive the idle circuits are on these 4-corner units, barely turning the screw changes readings on the gage.

[Cliff R]

"Cliff you just jinxed yourself. I think i spelled that correctly. I'm sure if i didn't someone will correct me."

No doubt! I did get one back yesterday and found absolutely nothing wrong with it, cleaned it out, leak/vacuum checked it and fine during the running test?

Lots of carburetor shops advertise some sort of "flow" testing. Even the carb companies that "remanfacture" Q-jets are supposed to have very expensive equipment to test them. Even so, they are WAY out of calibration, always too much fuel at all points. I suspect they set them up a tad rich to "mask" problems and minimize customer complaints. It also lets one unit cover a broader range of applications. I haven't seen a remanned unit in at least 15 years that was anywhere near as good as a correctly rebuilt factory peice.

When it comes to carburetors (and most other things with this hobby), nothing works as well as a unit tuned exactly for the application. This holds true for Holley's, Demons and Q-jets. Every unit we've ever built required custom settings for best performance in all areas. It's completely hit and miss to buy an off the shelf carburetor and have it be dead on in ALL areas.

I'm not at all surprised with Jeff's findings on the Demon units. Any carburetor is a very precise metering device, and requires that all air and fuel passages be precisely drilled/sized, machined surfaces smooth/flat, not to mention free from dirt and debri.

What I am surprised about it BG's customer service. If they insist on faulty units getting shipped directly back to them, they they should expend the time/funds to fix them, followed accurate testing, BEFORE sending them back to the customer?

No doubt excessive comebacks and customer complaints prompted Summit to quick selling them?......Cliff

[Rugratman]

How about right BEFORE they ship?
They are expensive.
Less money in marketing and more in quality control. You are basically stuck with it, once you get it. Add shipping to repair a new carb, or having someone do it for you, add all these costs into the price. Time / effort, phone calls.
They suck.