Edelbrock AVS Carburetor - Thunder Struck

Having your cake and eating it to. Isn't that the ultimate goal for every hot rodder? For a hot street car, this means having lots of power without turning it into an undrivable monster. What we are looking for is a car that idles clean, cruises down the road with decent fuel economy and yet has the beans to click off an 11-second trip through the quarter. Not a terribly tricky thing to do with a boosted or EFI car, but it can be a little challenging to pull off with just a simple carburetor. So when Edelbrock introduced their new 800-cfm AVS, we thought there was a chance we could put a combination around it that would give us what we wanted.

These new carbs from Edelbrock are a bolt-on replacement for the units that came on many of the factory Mopar musclecars, but they'll also work just fine on most any manifold that has a square flange bolt pattern. Edelbrock has refined the tooling and manufacturing process over the years so while this carb traces its roots back to the old Carter AVS, it is actually a new design that has been re-tooled and improved where possible. One major difference is the fact that this style of carburetor is now available with an 800-cfm rating. The 800 cfm is a great compromise size for a healthy big-block motor, big enough for 550-plus horsepower, yet small enough that idle quality and part-throttle operation are not heavily compromised.

What makes the AVS a great carburetor for a high-powered street car is the use of a spring-loaded door that controls the secondary air flow, as well as the use of stepped metering rods to control the air/fuel mixture. Since metering rods are available with different step combinations, it is possible to independently alter the air/fuel ratio for both cruise and power modes with a single rod change. For example, a metering rod that is thicker on the big step but thinner on the small step will richen up the power mode air/fuel ratio (A/F), while simultaneously leaning out the cruise mode. Accomplishing that same trick on a double-pumper carb would require disassembly of the carb and drilling the power valve restriction channel.

In order to get a feel for this new AVS carb, we strapped our test car to a Dynojet chassis dyno that was equipped with both a load brake system and a wide-band oxygen sensor. This setup allowed us to see what the air-fuel ratio was doing throughout the entire operating range of the engine. What we were looking for was a tune up that resulted in an A/F ratio of 14.5:1 at idle and cruise, but richened up to 12.5:1 when the engine was in power mode. Power mode for this engine was determined to be anytime the manifold vacuum was less than 6 inches. This power mode point varies for different engines depending on the compression ratio and the size of the camshaft. In our case, the engine idles at 850 rpm with a vacuum reading of 14 inches, so we had plenty of operating range in which to work. The power mode circuitry in the AVS carb is turned on by manifold vacuum working against the step up spring. When the manifold vacuum drops due to load, the step up spring forces the metering rod up and the step down in rod size allows more fuel to flow through the jet. There is a variety of step-up springs available from Edelbrock so that the turn-on point of this power mode enrichment circuit can be varied.

The first dyno pull with the 800-cfm AVS right out of the box netted us a near perfect 12.5 A/F ratio, but the mixture at cruise was too rich since the A/F ratio there was only 12:1. Consequentially, we had to make a jet change and a metering rod change in order to get the cruise A/F ratio leaned out. Leaning out the cruise circuitry then forced us to richen up the secondary jets by one step in order to get the WOT A/F ratio back to the desired 12.5:1. Total tuning time only took a couple of hours and then we were on our way. The engine now idles smooth and steady, gas mileage is significantly better in cruise mode, and the engine puts down more than 450hp to the rear tires at WOT. Sounds like having your cake and eating it too!

Mixing different metering rods and jets together allows the carb to be tuned richer or leaner in either cruise or power modes. This chart only shows a few common combinations, there are actually several hundred different possibilities available if all combinations of rods and jets are used.

Edelbrock has several different models of the AVS now in their line-up. Prices are very competitive with typical double pumper type carbs.