General
If the engine does not start right away after the car has been warmed up and then stopped for a while, and you really have to organise it to start it, a carburetor spacer could help.
The cause of the phenomenon may be a fuel filter lying on the intake manifold or poorly routed fuel lines. It is also possible that if the carburetor is mounted directly on the intake manifold, it gets too hot and so does the gasoline in the chambers.
In all cases, this results in the gasoline already evaporating on its way into the carburetor or in the carburetor itself, thus not producing a usable mixture for starting the engine. Only when a proper push of gasoline comes again, by pumping with the accelerator pedal, does the car start.
Solution
The solution may be a composite spacer between the intake manifold and the carburetor.
I install the carburetor spacer #8725 from Edelbrock. This moves the carburetor up a good 12 mm/0.5 in and insulates it. Thus, the carburetor is better protected from the heat of the engine. Due to this additional distance, the fuel filter also gains distance and no longer lies on the intake manifold.
For some time now, Edelbrock has also been offering rubber “spacers” directly as heat insulators, e.g. #9266.
The spacer and the intake manifold should fit each other. The installed carburetor is a quad carburetor. This means that it consists of 2 primary carburetor stages and 2 secondary carburetor stages. One primary and secondary stage each feed 4 cylinders. The intake manifold is also split in two. Due to the firing order, a constant suction in the intake manifold is ensured for 4 cylinders each and thus a constant mixture supply.
Implementation
The assembly is very simple and goes quickly. Only the four retaining nuts of the carburetor need to be unscrewed. The carburetor is then lifted up.
Since the original mounting bolts are too short, the spacer kit also includes correspondingly long ones. These are simply unscrewed and replaced. Gasket, spacer, gasket are then threaded over them and finally the carburetor is put back on. The nuts are tightened with max. 10 Nm.
