I have 1985 Dodge 250 power ram pickup. It has an edelbrock carb on it. The truck has a dead spot when you are taking off or at about 1/4 throttle. If anyone can help me with this problem i would greatly appreciate it.

thanks,
dale

The answer I was told, and that seemed to work well for my friend as well, is to throw the edelbrock away and get a holley.

I had a 750 edl on my 86 (bad advice by a chevy guy mechanic) and it just didn't work for crap. Dyno shop said it was the wrong carb, holley 600 would work much better, and we put it up on the dyno. Gains of about 100hp and 100 lb-ft at the fattest part, has me convinced. No, we didn't waste time trying to tune the improper carb.

With a small-block V8, a 750 c.f.m. carburetor is too big, no matter what kind of manifold you have or whether it is a Holley or an Edelbrock. It just pumps too much into the engine. The 600 c.f.m. Edelbrock I have on my 318 gained me the same improvements as horatio102's Holley 600.

Check the wiring for the choke, it should be hooked to a negative ground and a positive lead powered by a switched 12v power source, meaning a source that only comes on with the ignition, such as the radio, the turn signals, the wipers, etc... However, stay away from the coil or alternator wiring. Those will fry the wiring and the choke itself. Hopefully it is something simple and not a problem in the drivetrain.

My buddy didn't listen to me and he got the Edl 600, tweaked on it for over a year, and finally bought a Holley. Within two months of tweaking on that he's got all of the irritating glitches worked out that he could never get done with the edelbrock. Power wise, about the same, but driveability wise the Holley works better for him. Mine... you're right. The 750 was way too big of a carb for the RPM's and compression I've got.

Scratch that. His 318 made about the same to the tires with the Holley, but between dyno runs he also removed the 1" spacer and went from a 31 to a 32" tire. The spacer was good for about 40 lb-ft on the edelbrock, so he dropped 40 lb-ft by taking it out, plus dropped a little more to the tires by putting bigger tires on, but made all of those losses up by switching carbs, if that makes any sense at all.

I have a 1" 4-hole spacer and stock tires. What's his 0-60 time? Mine is around 7.5 seconds.

His is a 73 4x4 with 32" tires, 0-60 time? who knows. It's pretty quick for an old truck though. If he gets a good dig it's a little bit faster than my 86, but I'm working against 35" tires, 5" lift, automatic, and 3/4 ton frame/running gear. Have you had your truck on a dyno?

I will try to when I get the TCI transmission in it next week.