Good offroad 4-bl carbs

[J10-401]

I'm looking for opinions. The MC 2100 is a great offroad carb. Is the AMC-Motorcraft 4300 just as good for off-angle operation? I'm talking about hill climbing, sand and typical desert operation - not the extremes of climbing boulders.

Another Ford carb that I've looked at is the 4100 Autolite 4-bl. According to Ponycarburators.com it is a terrific street performer with advantages over any Holley. Any knowlege about the offroad capabilities of the 4100? I thinking that they may have been used in V8 Broncos or other ford 4WD vehicles.

All these Ford carbs are known for long-term reliability and decent street performance and gas mileage. Plus they all look OEM enough to get by smog inspection sillyness. The only question is how well the offroad issues are handled.

[grimgaunt]

Quadra-jet

[El Jefe]

if the 4300 is the 4 barrel, i aint good with numbers, it sucks off-road. Quara-toilet is very good, but can be kinda of a bee-otch to tune. i have the Edelbrock 1406 with the off-road needles, its pretty ok, still will cut out a little too easily in my opinion.

[FSJeeper]

Q-Jet, without a doubt but are tricky to get dialed in perfectly, but man, once you do! I have tried the Carter/Edelbrock carbs and they do not impress me at all. Holley's are the easiest to setup and you can buy an off road model or do the mods yourself if you want something very simple to dial in.

[KaiserMan]

Another vote for q-jets. They are excellent carbs, once you get them set right. Which can be a bit of a pain.

[HeepofaJeep]

Another vote for q-jets. They are excellent carbs, once you get them set right. Which can be a bit of a pain.

X2. Totally agree.

[McRoth]

I've got a Quadrajet from a 350 that I picked up for my wag that you can have for $20 plus shipping. I decided that I'm going to go TBI instead. seems to be in good shape, but I'm sure it'll need a rebuild kit.

[tgreese]

The 4100 should be excellent off-road, since they are essentially 4V 2100s. I've no experience to back that up though. A large venturi (352, 390) 4100 should be easy to come by if you know of a yard with old cars. AFAIK it was only used with the FE big blocks and hipo 289 (small venturi), and the 289 carb is unobtainium. Pickups and Broncos all used 2Vs. Maybe a good option if you've already got a square pattern manifold.

[orangecherokee]

if you plan on running anything besides an auto i suggest you use a hand throttle on the shifter. after last weekend i wouldn't trust a carb for anything.

[J10-401]

Thanks all. The Q-jet isn't an option with my manifold.

The 4100 sounds good if it was a dual 2100. I got 200K from my old 2100 with only one rebuild around 130K. Since then I switched over to the 4300 and it works OK. I want to try either a 4100 or 4300 that's re-engineered by those Ponycarburator folks. The 4300 had lots of quirks that they fix. The 4100 would be more expensive but likely to add a few more HP. I'm hoping to improve carb performance all around but don't want to create problems going offroad.