I am finishing the installation of my edelbrock carb, and I'm wondering something, will the car still run well with the manual choke carb on it? will the distributor work, and such, I'm worried about running into some electrical problems, like the onboard computer messing up because its not hooked up to the carb like it was with the Rochester.
Should I just rebuild the rochester? or does anyone have a rebuilt one that they wanna part with for abit of cash
Cause I'm worried that I'm gonna hook this all up, start the car, and mess ALOT up by messing up the whole stock set up while keeping the computer stock.
I dunno if that makes sense, I just need alot of help, I'm running out of options on what all to do, as I'm moving in 2 weeks, and if the Camaro isn't running, its gonna have to be sold, cause I can't afford towing it to where I'm moving.

-Karma

 

Your suspicions about the distributor are correct. Once the ECM sees that the computer controlled carb is not plugged in it will throw a Check Engine light and will go into "limp home" mode. This, among other things, will mean that your distributor will be given a VERY weak advance curve by the ECM and the engine will run like crap- very little power, bad mileage. Also, the computer will no longer try to lock up the torque converter (if an automatic trans car)

You have 2 options:

1. Also replace the cc-HEI distributor with an older non-computer controlled HEI (standard mechanical and vacuum advance mechanisms). It will literally drop right in and hook up to all your stock wiring (except the 4-wire plug coming out the back of your distributor that is the computer controlled timing wire harness back to the ECM). Please note that this will effectively take the computer completely out of the loop when it comes to tuning the engine- you're back to tuning just like in the old days- with jets, screws, spring, advance kits, etc. Many people like to go this way because they are more familiar with tuning engines like this and often end up with very good results very quickly.

2. Rebuild the original cc-QJet carb. If you haven't tackled one of these before I recommend against trying this if you need to have the car driveable within a few weeks. Very few people get this done right the first time through and end up with a worse running carb than before.