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It's the same reason most morons are into chevs, they just don't know any better! And apart form all this what about all the other problems holleys have, the stripped out threads, the baseplates that are made out of cheese, the fact that the basic design with all the leaks and all the other problems is out of the 50's, the fact that in warm weather they wont start when hot because they boiled over when you turned the engine off, this is a classic, holley couldn't fix it so they gave it a name... "flash boil" the fact that a tiny spec of dirt gets in them and they go haywire. I could go on and on if you guys are happy with junk so be it!




so i guess what should be taken from this thread is what?
most morons like chevies and only a select few people in the world know how to tune a thermoquad?
i've been playing with cars since the 1960's and as i recall, by then the holley 4150's and 4160's had been out for quite some time. the TQ didn't arrive until around 1969. during the years to follow i don't recall many (if any) people touting the TQ as the greatest carb on earth like i see in this thread today. i wonder why that is? to think no one could ever tune one properly would be a ludicrous thought. the argument that they just weren't as popular without an explanation is just crazy talk. if the argument is that they didn't make as many carbs as holley did, well, that's true, but why? if they were the latest and greatest, Carter surely would have made more. right?
they must have some inherent drawback that caused their demise. not only did Chrysler Corporation give up on them, but also the performance crowd of the 70's and 80's etc. so now you'd have one believe that they really are all that and a bag of chips 40+ years later. hasn't history taught us this lesson already?
i've owned a few thermoquads over the years and they performed as well as one could expect. okay mileage, no bogs, etc etc. the fact is none of them ever performed as well as a comparable sized 4150 holley. i never cared for the fact that the primary's are so small that you'd have to put the pedal half way to the floor to get the same acceleration as a 4150 does at less than 1/4 throttle. i never cared for that quadrajet sound of the secondary's opening. some thought it sounded cool, although i didn't. it was mostly noise to me. every car i ever had with a thermoquad eventually got replaced with a holley. the cars drove better and were always faster at the race track. perhaps those are just some of the reasons the thermoquads went the way of the dinosaur. oh, and by the way, don't tell me about holleys that have stripped bolt holes or leaks. we all know what caused the threads to strip out. maybe we can talk about cracked and leaking phenolic carb bodies instead, or some of the other inherent design flaws of the lately much revered thermoquad, or maybe you'd rather not...


machine shop owner and engine builder