[critter]

I've got an 850 Speed Demon that's been great but it was an older unit and I bought it from a board member here who had already been running it on his car. I'm guessing if we were able to track it we'd find a time where they changed something in their manufacturing process (like moving it out of the country or something like that) to create the problems. No excuse for bad products.

[Larry Navarro]

Hey Cliff.......
Is the book on sale yet?

[shaker455]

Cliff,
Do I get an autographed copy??

I got to say Cliff I'm firm in step with what you wrote about the re-pop carbs and how most if not all are set up for general pourpose.

Good news Larry, I don't dislike annular booster any more.....I had some really good results with our friends secert weapon that I've been building & testing...

Critter,
I have an older Speed Demon 850 too that I modified and machined off the choke tower and it now looks like a Mighty series, that was the one missing the rear squiter needle and it was running on my friends BBC 502 for years and running rich due to the missing needle as it was constantly drawing off the accel pump sqiuter with no needle to stop it.

[BVR421]

This thread deserves to be at the top again.
Free advertising for BG

ever see the BG NHRA Pro Stock car with the hood off?
guess what carbs are on that motor?

[shaker455]

Okay BVR421,
I don't think I've seen the car but why do I want to say Holley Dominators?

[speedshopmike]

i'll chime in with nothing nice to say about bg, either...
i pretty much stopped selling them several years ago.
i've owned several; all were basically junk.
pretty, though.

far as a qjet rebuild from a mass producer, believe it or not, but the ones holley does are really good.
i always found that amusing....
it won't be spot-on by any stretch like a cliff's custom jobbie, but for a specific oem app, they're cheap and decent.

it's my impression edelbrock dumped the qjet line due to issues with weber-maranelli and costs going out of control, not quality issues.

[Cliff R]

Larry, we have 100 books in stock as of yesterday, send me an email.

Mike, you are mostly correct, production cost(s) and slow sales were probably the biggest contributor to Edelbrock dumping the Q-jets. I heard once that they sold about 20,000 "Performer" series AFB clones to 1 of their Q-jets!

Face it, a lot of folks are CHEAP, and they just want their car to move from point A to point B. The Edelbrock Performer series of carburetors are by far the most cost effective way to make this happen. If you don't care about precise metering, adjustablility, best power, etc, the Performer series carburetors are by far the best choice out there, for around $200 (or less) you get a brand new carburetor, ready to run, and relatively easy to tune. The Chevy boys LOVE them, I'll bet 80 percent of the Chevrolet engines I've ever seen at a car show/cruise has an Edelbrock intake/Performer carbs sitting on them.

We obtained two excellent samples of the Performer carburetors here, 750cfm's. Bought the tuning kit, and went to work on them. It only takes minutes to "tune" on for part throttle, heavy part throttle and full throttle A/F. They lack any provision for adjusting the secondary airflap, BIG showstopper as they failed all full throttle testing miserably in any configuration!

Currently, there aren't any commercially available "remanufactured" Q-jets that will meet our testing standards, Holley's or otherwise. 10-15 years ago, some of them were pretty decent. Today, they are all "generic" at this point, missmatched parts, poorly adjusted, assembled, complete waste of time/funds. Most can't even be salvaged due to reaming out the threads for the needle/seat assembly and other "generic" modifications to make them easier to build on a large production scale.....Cliff

[6567GTO]

Originally Posted by Cliff R

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

I ended up ebaying it and told the guy I could never get it right on my engine. I also mentioned to him that the next thing I was going to try was putting a new pair of metering blocks on it. I sold it pretty cheap so I don't feel too bad. I'm now using a 950HP which runs great. I still have my Q-jets for the 67 for you to do. Just not at that point with that car yet.
Phil

[Cliff R]

Phil, we tested an HP950 on the dyno at KRE, back to back against my 1977 Pontiac q-jet. It made 2 LESS hp! I also borrowed one last year for some street/strip testing, ran OK, not nearly as smooth on the primary side as my Q-jet, but fine at full throttle. They seem to be pretty decent units as delivered, the one I borrowed could have used some improvements at light/part throttle as there was a slight, but noticable transition onto the main system. It wasn't mine so I didn't start messing with restrictions/air bleeds, but I'm sure we could have made some improvments.

We're running a pretty long "backlog" on rebuilding/restorations, keep that in mind with the 67 q-jets, you may want to get them in line early.....thanks....Cliff

[Tech @ BG]

Guys,

We take quality control extremely seriously, and have made substantial changes in our production processes in order to improve what we are doing. Every carburetor does indeed get flow tested before shipping. If you had a carburetor with a “photo copied” flow-tag that would have to have been an older carburetor, and that employee is no longer employed here. Every flow tag is now serialized and recorded that we can go back through our computerized records on the flow bench to pull up the carburetors flow characteristics. Flow bench testing can catch most issues, but will not catch everything. This where other changes in our production process will help. We encourage all feedback, and try to implement changes whenever possible to produce the highest quality products possible.

Shaker455,

If you can’t get the boosters to tighten up please let me know, and we can replace them for you.


BVR421,

Not sure what car you were looking at since Barry hasn’t made a pass without Demon carburetors since they’ve been legal.

[Skip Fix]

Tech @ BG What is the conversion for flowbench testing at the standard 1.5" carb pressure vs head pressures(10",28")?

It gets a little confusing comparing carbs in different series(yours and Holleys HP) that show different cfm but the same venturi/throttle blades, especially when test pressures aren't listed.

The only 4150 in your line or Holleys that could flow more than the 850 is your removable sleeve one that does have a larger venturi.

For the record my Speed Demon 850 has run flawlessly out of the box, no shavings etc. The air bleeds are incorrect for my new tighter convertor, "street" pump gas motor's fuel curve compared to an out of the box Holley DP 4781. Planning on drilling and tapping for replaceable bleeds, looks like the recess is already cast in. I'd buy just the main body if that was sold. I know you guys sell the base platres separately.

[george kujanski]

Cliff: I'd like to send you an email regarding getting one of your books, but your profile says you do not accept emails............

george

[speedshopmike]

bg guy, that's good news...but y'all have a LONG, UPHILL road to climb....
i don't feel confident in any way selling your product....i'm curious how you plan to get back in the game, given the last few years of garbage produced and awful service.
i ate a couple carbs in teh past in order to provide the service my customers deserve, and i'm just a little speedshop.


maybe barry should spend more time working and less time...being barry.

i wish you luck, as i do all aftermarket domestic manufacturers...a good start would be replacing every jerk who mans your phones with someone who actually cares and has a clue.
next, lose the **** warranty tactics and take care of those who spent their hard-earned money on bg product and are stuck in carburhell because of it.
if someone has an issue, REPLACE THEIR CARB!!!! without putting them thru hell like you have and do.

this is from point of view of a former WD for you and retailer.
the only thing you make i still sell is 190003/4 rebuild kits, which are quite nice...

[speedshopmike]

wow, the word "n*a^z*i is even being censored.
lighten up a bit, PY.

[Formula jg]

speedshopmike,

I could not agree with you more, I think the only reason they give a 90 warranty is because that may be the MINIMUM required by law.

BG,

Please read my post on the first page, the carb issues are of a serious nature and if it wasn't for some of these great guys on this board like Shaker455 I would be left with a brand new carb (less than 100 miles on it) that I could not use.
Countless hours, days, weeks and months were spent chasing down unrelated problems i.e. distributor, ignition, timing, valve train etc. and replacing unnessesary parts just because I did not want to believe that this 3rd new replacement Mighty Demon in 3 weeks could not possibly be the cause of my troubles.
The carb cost me $900.00 CDN (and that was with my friends employee discount) plus the additional expense to correct its mfg. and or quality control deficiencies, this lesson was one of my more costly ones and I defenitely would never wish this emotional experience on another fellow car guy.

[Tech @ BG]

Skip Fix,

Here ya go, but you still don’t have an exact comparison (I’ll get to that in a second).

10” H2O = .73559” Hg
20.4” H2O = 1.5” Hg
28” H2O = 2.059565” Hg

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Each carburetor company rates their carburetors differently. We for example rate the “CFM” by using a median or average flow number if the carburetor was installed upon an application that we would recommend. Meaning if you were to install a 650 Demon on an engine that we’d recommend it on it should flow about 650 CFM at WOT if you were measuring the amount of air going into the engine. So when comparing a Demon carburetor to most other brands we are rated more conservatively, so we normally will use a “Smaller” rated carburetor to achieve optimal performance. The reason we do not use the 1.5” Hg number is that it’s not a realistic number for real world performance. In most performance applications if your engine was pulling 1.5” Hg at WOT you could make more HP by going to a larger carburetor.

Here are some flow numbers off of a few Mighty Demon carburetors so you can get an idea. The WOT number at 1.5” Hg will be with an average A/F ratio of about 12.5:1.

650 Mighty Demon at 1.5” Hg will flow 753 CFM Wet (Air and Fuel)
750 Mighty Demon at 1.5” Hg will flow 920 CFM Wet (Air and Fuel)
825 Mighty Demon at 1.5” Hg will flow 982 CFM Wet (Air and Fuel)

Now if the engine any of these carburetors were on were to pull more than 1.5” Hg the flow would be higher, less vacuum lower.

I hope this helps some.

[Tech @ BG]

Speedshopmike,

Thank you for the comments. We apologize for the problems you had in the past. Honestly I can’t say that I see us as “out of the game” since is business is actually better (and more profitable) than it’s ever been. It is understandable that you’re upset with problems that you’ve had, and that you felt you had to “eat” some carburetors to appease your customers. Normally in a scenario like that we would have gotten the carburetor(s) back to go back through them to determine exactly what the problem was. In that manor you wouldn’t be completely out. Were these carburetors you had purchased through a warehouse or directly through here?

As far as Barry goes the way I look at it is that if he’s willing to sign his name to millions of dollars worth of debt, and the responsibility of peoples livelihoods he can run the company as he sees fit. In 13 years I’ve never had a check bounce.

As far as tech people go. I am confident that we have one of the best technical staffs in the aftermarket doing an extremely hard job. Not saying our guys are perfect or even close. We have training on a regular basis, and send the guys to continuing education classes to help with their presentation and communication skills. We have had personal issues in the past, and have removed those people. As I’m sure you know running a small business finding qualified help that want to work is extremely hard process. We’re actually looking to increase our technical support staff right now, so if you know anyone wanting to come to GA, let me know.

As far as company policies as with any small manufacture you have to do what is right for your specific business. With the type of product we sell, and that even with manufacturing issues over the years the majority of carburetor problems boil down to misapplication, or tuning problems we can not just “Eat” those products. Some of our former distributors would send back carburetors that had been well used with a note that their customer had changed engine combinations and the carburetor no longer performed, or the best was that the carburetor made the engine have a rod knock worse than their original carburetor. We want to be fair to everyone, but we’d have to go up tremendously on pricing in order to have a policy in that manor.

As I’m sure you are aware we are one of the manufactures that supports and protects their distributors. We offer a fair profit margin, and are working on additional ways to help our distributors make more profit, and increase their sales potential.

If you have any suggestions, we’re always open to hear them.

[Rugratman]

To bad this tech doesn't work the phone.
I can not believe that the carbs are tested before shipping. If they are, there must be a HUGE acceptable quality standard.

I agree with Mike, If you ship an inspected and correctly built carb to a customer, then stand behind it. Replace it with a new carb. No questions asked. Where they bought it. Within a 90 day timeframe.
Shipping it back to you guy's, waiting to have it fixed, A new carb mind you, and waiting for to be returned is BS for one of your high priced carbs. The price should reflect the guarantee that it's a PERFECT product. And there is no reason why the carbs are not perfect, every single one that is shipped out your door. After all they are inspected and flowed right?
Your manufacturing is flawed, Your quality inspections are flawed, Your return policy is flawed.
By the way, what does BG consider a " older " carb? When did this change?
.

[johnsma22]

Please excuse me Tech @ BG if my question sounds inflammatory, it is not meant to be so. If everything at BG is going so peachy, why is it that one of the nations largest supplier of aftermarket parts (Summit) has made the business decision to discontinue carrying your carbs?

John

[george kujanski]

BG tech: remember that one "Oh *****" wipes out a lot of "atta boys".

I've been looking at BG carbs towards the day when I improve my induction system. Based on what I've read regarding junk in the carb, poorly drilled passages, etc. I've stopped looking.

Any iron-clad guarantee you can provide that the mentioned problems are a thing of the past?

george