Carb & Timing

67 GTO red carb

Retune your Carburetor for more Power

Classic car owners know today’s gasoline is significantly different from the fuel mixture available when the car was new. The different formula effects performance, especially compared to using a carburetor instead of modern computer-controlled fuel-injected systems. Today’s gasolines can cause your carburetor to shift about 3-5% leaner and also cause misfires and poor throttle response. To get the most out of your classic car’s engine, you need to retune the carburetor and distributor.

67 GTO red carb
70 Dodge Dart timing

Too Lean or Poor Throttle Response

If running too lean, the off-idle circuit needs to be enriched. Regardless of the carburetor brand, we can make the right adjustments to ensure your engine gets the correct amount of fuel it needs. If the problem is throttle response, the pump circuit needs to be more active. We’ll adjust your carburetor, or recommend a high-performance replacement, that will give you power when you need it. Lastly, the ignition spark timing curve and the air-fuel mix curve should be retuned. With the proper mix and firing, we’ll make sure your classic gives you the power to make it fun to drive again.

Let's Go >

How Driven Does It Right

Tips from the Pros
70 Camaro carburetor

After years under cars, we've honed the best installation matched with the right parts to do the job right

Carb and timing are like peanut butter and jelly

We have to tune both together for optimum results. Sometimes that means simply adjusting the carb (re re-building it) and sometimes it means upgrading the carb, or the distributor - or both.

70 Mustang green lights
carburetors on shelf

Don’t go too big when it comes to carbs

More CFM does not alway translate into more power. We’ve seen it with our own eyes on an engine dyno. That 850 double pumper with huge jets sounds cool in theory - but we’ve seen a 650 out of the box Holley make better numbers on the dyno than the bigger carb. Don’t trust your buddies, some basement dweller on the forums - trust guys who know…. And make calls to guys who know to choose the right stuff.

HEI, MSD Box, Points… we work on it all.

We can help dial in just about any system - old school, new school - we’ve touched it all in over 10 years and 1000’s of cars. We may recommend upgrades - but we can also work with what you have as long as it functions.

Let’s get dialed in >
64 Ford Falcon inspection techs

What's the cost?

Each job will be estimated individually, but here are some guidelines to help you budget

Just a simple carb set-up and timing can take just an hour or two of labor ($200-$400) and parts will be determined by what we need to make it all work right.
Cost icon

varies

for the parts

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$200 - $400

for labor

Set me up >
A

There's no hard or fast rule here. Sometimes we can adjust it out - or sometimes we need to make bigger changes - but on most performance engines with big cams it’s hard to make them run lean at idle..

A

Usually - NO. We can usually get it right by accelerator pump adjustments, and timing curve.

A

Absolutely - Backfires or lean popping is all timing and carb related… we can get you dialed in and running smooth.

Cars we've had Our Hands on