[GTO-relic]

has anyone tried the new Edelbrock 4150 VRS Holley-style carbs on a Pontiac yet?

https://www.edelbrock.com/vrs-4150-carburetors

[MatthewKlein]

I've seen a few videos about them and a tour of the factory production area. Looks like a nice piece.

What confuses me is the decision to copy that style carburetor. They must be banking on holley transitioning away from carburetors.

Personally I would like to see an updated version of the quadrajet/thermoquad.

[steve25]

One great thing about those is the external idle air adjustment.

The original Carter AFB carbs from the early 60s had them and I can’t believe it’s taken these many decades for such a feature to come around again!

[Kenth]

Looks like they added two more places for the fuel to leak from.

[Formulajones]

One thing I've noticed from the photos and videos I've seen on them is they are using their own style of bowl gaskets,.....of course. So if ya need one of those while in the road good luck finding them, better carry spares. I wouldn't be shocked if the meter block gasket is it's own as well.

Seems every time these new renditions of a carb comes out there is something about them unique that wont interchange with the carb they copy. That's why I avoid them. I can still stop at any auto store and grab gaskets, needle seats, and power valves when I'm in a pinch for a good old fashion Holley carb.

[GTO-relic]

the VRS is 1/2" taller and that's a problem with some cars especially Firebirds, that are already close to hood from factory.
I can barely fit an 800 Holley vac sec carb on my '70 GTO under the stock hood with a Victor intake and and air cleaner,
that's with the choke air horn already cut off and sculpted inlet all done by a custom carb shop.
had to cut the carb stud down, and also grind ears off the carb wing nut. I mean it barely fits with a standard open element air cleaner.
but I can sweep a screwdriver or clothes hanger under the hood with it shut and carb/air cleaner in place.
no way this carb would fit under a stock Pontiac A, F, G body hood with a Victor intake.
maybe if the vent tubes were cut off.
I'd assume the same problem with high riser intakes on a Camaro, Chevelle, 442, GS, Monte Carlo, Mustang, etc.

[GTO-relic]

Originally Posted by steve25

One great thing about those is the external idle air adjustment.

The original Carter AFB carbs from the early 60s had them and I can’t believe it’s taken these many decades for such a feature to come around again!

that feature has been around a while. Qjets had it on the lid up front in the 1970's but not a high degree of adjustability. the original BG Demon carbs had it in the air filter stud boss, you could remove the threaded stud, and use a long screwdriver and adjust it. what happened historically was this: BG Demon brand upgraded the Holley in 1990's, Holley had to spend some money to compete and introduce the HP line. then Holley sued BG in court. eventually BG went bankrupt, and Holley was right there like a vulture buying all the existing factory machinery, carbs/parts, and buildings. Holley then continued to make the Demon carbs, first finishing up what was in house in process, then changing them for the worse and cheapening them- until they were no better than a standard Holley or in some cases worse. But along the way they got all the Demon improvements. Now Edelbrock took all those Demon traits and put them in the VRS. Threaded emulsions jets, idle jets, top idle air bleeds, sight glass bowls, idle bypass adjustment, billet metering blocks, 4150/Dominator interchangeable baseplates, interchangeable boosters, etc. were all features invented by BARRY GRANT on their top line RACE carbs. these companies steal shamelessly and stomp on the ingenuity of the little guys, then take their inventions and call it their own, and re-release it. they're banking on a couple decades no one being around that remembers. Holley immediately announced all the BG features as shamelessly their new own inventions when they bought out BG, now Edelbrock is doing the same thing. reason being today's Holley, Edelbrock are not the same companies of old. They are opportunistic and owned by holding companies, faceless investors nobody ever gets to actually see.

[GTO-relic]

looks like the sizing is way off
Summit Racing actual buyer's review


· 10 months ago
Excellent But Smaller Than Advertised

Excellent Carb But it's in no way the same size 750 cfm rating as a Holley or Proform 750.
It responds to every adjustment.
Slowed 2 tenths and 2 mph.
Other than the cfm description it runs great probably best for street.
Posting side by side photo

[GTO-relic]

actual JEG'S buyer review 750cfm VRS
he gave it a 1 star out of 5
returned it.


★★★★★
1 out of 5 stars.
· a year ago
Nicely executed, no support, possibly design flaw.

This is a very nice looking carb, fully adjustable, except for maybe some engine sizes (spec). Also, Edelbrock has zero support, I called them 3 times in 2-weeks and received no call back. I ran this carb on a fresh Ford FE big-block (445ci), moderate build - Edelbrock Performer RPM intake, Edelbrock 60065 heads, and Comp Cams Hyd Roller (230/236@.050, .530 lift), pulling 12in vacuum at 800rpm (4-speed car). I'm familiar with how 4150's are tuned, including air jets, emulsion jets, etc. I could not get this carb to run at cruise above 11.5AFR, I was targeting 13.0AFR cruise (1800-2700rpm). With this engine spec I don't see that it's possible, so maybe this carb would work with a built small block, but a big block with high initial booster pulse I don't see it working, even with all the adjustments that are possible. I was told it's because the Throttle Bore (1.68") and small Venturi (1.25)" size causes too strong a pulse on a bigger motor with lots of vacuum, I don't know how true that is, but it makes sense, so be careful. Again, with zero support from Edelbrock, it's a hard sell. I tried approximately 25 different combinations with the emulsion jet stacks, air jets, and of coarse - main jets. Returning carb. 2-weeks of tuning time - lost.

[GTO-relic]

tech thread:

EDELBROCK VRS-4150 carbs, anyone using?
Hello all, I am a noob compared to you guys but I I have this carb on my '78 Bronco and its pretty dang awesome! All my friends said I was dumb to get a racing carb for my old rusty ford but they haven't ridden in it so whatevs...
I need help from you guys please tuning the secondaries a bit and have some specific questions about air bleeds relating to RPM (high speed/intermediate/low speed) etc..
Here is a photo that describes the metering block better.
Problem When I go WOT it starts at ~15 AFR and climbs down to the 12s and then 11s if you hold it to the floor. Also at high speed cruising it seems to still go rich into the 11s withough the power valve in use. This leads me to believe that the intermediate or high speed emulsion jets need to be downed a bit, or possibly a bigger air bleed on the top side of the carb for int#1.
My truck is limited to 4200RPM currently so I don't even know if I'm getting into use of the High Speed Bleeds(the green ones in my pic below)
More details below the pics...Thx in advance. I posted here because its the forum that has the latest results for this carb (seems the most current old school type forum interested in this carb).
Forum won't let me post pics due to being a new user. I will post pics later. I also have videos posted on Rumble under "Ricky Ace Wrenches"

"Buck the Truck" - Mall Crawler / MobileMudRainbowFactory for now.
'78 Ford Bronco
351M - 4 spd manual
Fenderwell header and Thrush cherry poppers
MSD 6AL limited at 4200
manual fuel pump
Edelbrock Dual plane intake
Idles around 900rpm warm @ 185
AFR/tach/vac gauge in cab (for tuning)

[GTO-relic]

youtube dyno shootout VRS vs Pro Comp
out of box the VRS only made 400HP
after tuning VRS was still down 11HP compared to their old Pro Comp 780

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb09TdY1GKo

description under video on youtube, 408" SBM Mopar

861 views Dec 30, 2023
This is the Dyno Run with of the 408 in the last video. Has the Speed Master CNC assembled heads. They were checked over and were good. We tried the usual 780 Pro Systems carb and an Edelbrock VRS-4150 750 carb. Out of the box the Edelbrock made 400 hp. After tuning it, we still only could get 516 hp. The old Pro System carb made 527 hp and more torque.

[GTO-relic]

a picture is emerging....if you get a VRS, get the 850.
or...supposedly there's a VRS 950 in the works, get that instead
the 650, 750 are for stock motors with stock int/ex manifolds, stock mild cams
the VRS is no where even near a real race carb.
not even in the same building or on the same floor...

[GTO-relic]

holee scheet.....things do not sound good at Edelbrock...they've moved more times than I can count, from California, to Tennessee, to Mississippi, Arizona...and combined with Comp Cams. former employees reveal what went on inside Edelbrock after Vics Sr./Jr. both passed. not a good scene. they lost all their old timer engineering talent.

https://www.speed-talk.com/forum/vie...ca0c8&start=15

Re: What Happened to Edelbrock's new VRS-4150 Carburetor?

Post by SchmidtMotorWorks » Wed Jun 22, 2022 11:23 pm
That carb would have come from a supplier in China that makes them already.
When I worked at Edelbrock, we were offered billet carbs made by the same company that makes a billet carb (I think it was FST).
The price was shocking low. The machine work and anodising looked perfect.

The problem at Edelbrock is that all of the motivated and talented middle-aged Engineers have moved-on to better paying jobs.
I am glad to have experienced "peak Edelbrock". Now that Chad has left, they are doomed, he was the go-to guy for most engineering decisions.
Brent has moved into marketing.

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Input from marketing can be demoralizing too. After a year of getting a manifold to perform as well as the best Ford manifolds, marketing want the shape of the plenum to have a different style...killed 25 HP. Ruined the product. It being aluminum was too heavy anyhow compared to the plastic Ford manifolds.

[GTO-relic]

Schmidt
I left in 2019.
The shop has been like that for a very long time.
Most of the equipment are 20+ years old. CNCs with 50kb of memory. (That's right 1/3 of an old floppy disc)
Set up guys don't have good tools, someone would steal them.
The company doesn't even give machinists rags when they need them.

So they just bolt the fixture on the machine anywhere, run the program and send the part to inspection.
Then edit the program by hand typing, run it again and repeat. If they get a usable part before they run out of castings, they keep making them.

Now that the Torrance building is sold, I was told some of the equipment went to San Jacinto where the foundry is, no one with the talent needed to fix the problems there would live near San Jacinto.
The foundry with flame and smoke and dust all around, and very loud sounds in that hot weather makes one wonder if hell would be any worse. No good CNC programmer, or machinist would do that job.
Especially these days in California, they could easily double, maybe triple their income working in Aerospace or Silicon Valley in shops with waxed tile floors and free catered food.

I think some may have been moved to the Comp Cams location, I have no insight as to whether that is better.

[GTO-relic]

I just wanted to see if they made the emulsion bleeds for these carbs yet, having seen it in Hot Rod magazine last year. instead I opened a pandoras box of a fkg nightmare scenario. poor Edelbrock. I hope they can turn it around somehow.

[GTO-relic]

found the cause of all this-
the Edelbrock carbs all use the correct size baseplates,
but they use smaller venturi sizes than what Holley uses.

Edelbrock 850- 1.39" venturi
Holley 850- 1.56" venturi

Edelbrock 750- 1.25" venturi
Holley 750- 1.37" venturi

the 650 size Edelbrock has 650 Holley dimensions,
but it probably has other mods that in reality, make it a 600cfm carb as well.
because a 600 and 650 Holley both have same throttle/venturi sizes.
probably will come with bigger boosters, or annular boosters.

I think they all have annular boosters actually,
in that case will decrease CFM even more than just the throttle/venturis alone.

all the Edelbrock carbs are undersized in CFM capability by 100cfm or so,
below what they actually advertised.
you can look up the specs on the Edelbrock site under each carb listing.

if you get one, get their "850" which will work out to be around a 780cfm

they're supposed to also make a "950" that will probably ? come in somewhere around 850 in reality.

it's almost like some globalists NWO global warming freaks bought Edelbrock,
and choked down the carbs to lower our carbon footprint,
to see if we're dumb enough not to notice ?

it's like that old comedy movie Space Balls,
our cfm is being rationed !

[GTO-relic]

click link, scoll down to read specs.

Edelbrock 850
https://www.edelbrock.com/vrs-4150-c...-cfm-1308.html

Edelbrock 750
https://www.edelbrock.com/vrs-4150-c...-cfm-1307.html

Edelbrock 650
https://www.edelbrock.com/vrs-4150-c...-cfm-1306.html

anyone with experience knows, take a Holley 850, put sleeves in to reduce the venturi to 1.39",
then add big annular discharge boosters, it's not an 850cfm anymore.
it's more like a 680-700cfm
an old 750cfm BG Race Demon with scalloped entry had a 1.4" venturi.
and BG specs were wet flowed which pumped the numbers up a bit.
a 1050cfm RS Demon would flow 950cfm with annular boosters, no other changes, on the BG wet flow bench.

[GTO-relic]

old Holley 750- 1.375" venturi

old BG Demon 750- 1.4" venturi

new Edelbrock VRS 850- 1.39" venturi

look on the bright side,
if you want a nice, brand spankin' new 750 carb,
just buy an Edelbrock VRS 850,
for $957.
don't forget the special length fuel line log, for $160
and about 5 sets of blank emulsion/air bleeds, for $50 a pack,
and pin drills, to drill them.
cuz they don't sell the bleeds.
yeh...that's gonna go over great, and sell really good...
if Vic Jr. was alive, heads would be rolling...
we're in the age of shameless "100 over" carburetor advertising....
because they can charge $1 per CFM now

[PAUL K]

I can believe a 1.39 venturi could flow a true 850 CFM.

[Formulas]

Originally Posted by PAUL K

I can believe a 1.39 venturi could flow a true 850 CFM.

The old school Holley 4bbl is rated @ 1.5? pressure drop take the same base plate with a smaller venturi flow it at a higher drop 2.0 and the carb will pass the same CFM.?

These numbers do not represent an actuall equasion use only for a trend model