Edelbrock Carb and original Air cleaner

Has anyone put an Edelbrock carb beneath the origiinal 305/350, 4 barrel air cleaner without any modifications? I have an 86 and not having much luck with reman/rebuilt carbs but wanting to keep the original look for a little longer! Thanks in advance.
Yes, I have a pressure gage inline and my fuel pump is dialed in at 5 psi.

You'll need a spacer to clear the fuel line or choke if I remember right. Junkyards are full of em on TBI trucks/vans that have the notches for the air cleaner base. I did have to remove the lower notches they use for alignment though. Plastic one with a dremel and the metal one was just spot welded. Used the same plastic one on my Holley with a factory clone dual snorkel

Thank you Rustisbest. Were you happy with the way the truck ran with the Edlebrock carb? Was it worth it?

I had no complaints. The whole engine, carb and all is in a buddy's truck running right along

Plastic, aftermarket air cleaner spacers are available too, in different heights. It used to be that you could walk into any Advance Auto or AutoZone and buy one for cheap, but you probably have to order one online now.

bucket said:

Plastic, aftermarket air cleaner spacers are available too, in different heights. It used to be that you could walk into any Advance Auto or AutoZone and buy one for cheap, but you probably have to order one online now.

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Those didnt work for the factory bases I've tried them on. Just a sloppy fit that you couldnt set the base on without it falling over while reaching for the lid. They do work on the aftermarket bases though.

Edelbrock also sells a banjo fuel fitting and dropped fuel line to get more air cleaner clearance, but I’ve never verified that it works to clear a stock air cleaner. I used the plastic spacer with a 1406 and made it work by carefully placing the air cleaner, but it always seemed kind of kludgy.

Some irony - the aftermarket Edelbrock air cleaners also have trouble with clearing the fuel fitting. At least one Edelbrock air cleaner part number (the 1221) works fine to clear it, but many don’t.

I used this. Worked fine.
https://www.jegs.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SearchResultsPageCmd?q=555-50071

Maybe there are some better made ones out there. These are how they fit up on both an oem base and this dual snorkel copy. When I tried a gasket the air cleaner just kind of slid off the spacer since it doesn't have much of a lip. Guess i could've glopped some silicone on there so it would actually filter the air lol.

Pics of notches in spacer where the tabs are and 1 rotated around= sloppy fit no matter how I turned it.



Rounded edge on factory style base vs thin edge that would seal up on aftermarket base



$1 at the junkyard with the lower tabs ground off. Plenty of room for a gasket

Gpaw44 said:

Has anyone put an Edelbrock carb beneath the origiinal 305/350, 4 barrel air cleaner without any modifications? I have an 86 and not having much luck with reman/rebuilt carbs but wanting to keep the original look for a little longer! Thanks in advance.
Yes, I have a pressure gage inline and my fuel pump is dialed in at 5 psi.

Click to expand...

I have an Edelbrock carb and a factory air cleaner(short style) on my 84 Sierra with a 350 and it fits perfectly, without any modifications or spacers

Current set up for my tbi to 4bbl swap engine… If you were to run a Qjet, the single mounting bolt tbi air cleaner drops right on. And you can plumb it to the core support air induction port.

To run that same air cleaner on the 1406 or 1906 (AVS2) for my other trucks? Dremel and engraving burr to drill out the spacer ring spot welds. Plumb the spacer to the valve cover breather, plumb the pcv to the carb port.

For either set up, use modern efi/ethanol rated fuel hose for fuel/pcv/breather. Holds up much longer than traditional fuel/vacuum hoses. Go to Cycle Gear, buy silicone dirtbike tank vent hose for your smaller vacuum lines… One and done.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I returned the Edelbrock Carb and all the attachments that I had bought and went with a reman origianl carb so that I could still attach the cruise, kick down and throttel cabels. I also disabled my emissions so that I now have manifold vacuum to the distrutor instead of ported vacuum and plugged all the vacuum lines that were attached to the carb except the outlet going to the PVC valve. There I attached one line to the PVC valve eleminating all lins that were originally braching off. Then I cut the belt that ran the air pump. The truck now runs smoother than before and has a lot more power. I think the 40 year old emission devices were going bad and effecting the way the truck was running.