I know that's a bit of a toughie though....

I'd love some opinions and suggestions on the opportune carb for my setup.

1980 Dodge Ramcharger, Stock late 70's 440, 727/205, 3.23 gears.

I'm looking for good low end torque, throttle response, and probably most important would be efficiency/mileage.

After doing some searches on here, it seems like the thermoquad might be the way for me to go. I've got an edelbrock 1406 that was on the truck before that seemed to run alright. I never had an O2 sensor on it (I do now), and it always seemed snappy and powerful, but I didn't leave it on there long enough to check out mileage.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,
Pat

TQ!!

define perfect.

To me that would include easy, cheap access to tuning parts.

I agree, TQ all the way.

fuel injection? Haven't done the swap to FI yet, but here is what I invested in for my truck 360 fuel system:
Holley 670cfm truck Avenger $400 + $9 for throttle lever adaptor. Then the carb didn't run right out of the box, so blew another $100 on:
$23 for accelerator pump cams,
$12 for vacuum secondary spring kit,
$9 each for power valves
$52 for a jet kit (or $7 a pair)
$12 each for discharge nozzels
$7 pair of 'blue' fuel bowl gaskets
$10 pair of metering block gaskets

Finally spent about $60 on a billet metering block, which made a big difference.
Used it to match up the restriction sizes, and when cleanong the Holley metering block, found left over debris in the jet wells from when holley made the metering blocks!

This dosen't even include the cost of the fuel system. I have an edelbrock 120 gph electric pump $160, and at least $200 on -6 AN fittings and braided fuel lines.

I spent $75 to chassis dyno with wideband O2 sensors, but if I wanted to install and monitor O2 sensors that would be more $$$.

So I probbably have close to $1,000+ in a carb fuel system that is really only tuned for a limited atmospheric conditions. Oops, forgot to include monies spent on filters and fuel pressure regulator....

FAST, Professional products and Holley all have 4bbl TBI kits for $2,000 or less.
The $1,650 Powerjection III #70026 is a complete kit with pump, filter, 750cfm tbi, wideband O2, regulator, pressure gauge, electronics, map sensor, etc.

Doing a Google search I found the polished kit even cheaper, #70027 for $1,497.76 at:
http://www.autopartsdealer.com/professio..._content=rank13

I ran a pre-smogger era thermoquad on my stock mid 70's 440. Mileage was decent, throttle response and driveability were good. Took a bit of tuning effort to get it to where I needed it to be, but after that I never really had to touch it.

A quick fuel 750 vacuum sec. with annualar booster for the primarys and down legs for the secondaries,it comes with idle feed restrictors and adjustable air bleeds. I am hoping to get 2 for my hemi project. Then next best thing is the holley 93770 truck avenger or 90770. It has annulars for both primary's and secondaries, off camber fuel vents and is fairly snappy for a low end torque motor. wideband O2 sensor for tuning. Tim

Holley 3310

that low-compression,smogger 440 will be perfectly happy with a box stock 600 holley with an electric choke. o'riellys,advance,auto zoo carry a universal 600 on the shelf (about $260) that will feed that engine just fine. about 10-12 mpg is the best that 6000# truck (and that dependent on tires size) is going to get anyway.

I ran a T-Q on a 73 440, ran great but that was 20 years ago. For your application a vaccum 600 holley or even a 625 eddy carb would work.

Perfect 750 Holley dbl pumper performance
Economy Rochester Q jet from mid 80s Mopar truck Parts are easy to get and millions made over the years

Thanks for all the input, felluhs

So a quick of questions:

With some sacrifice made to throttle response (I'm not building a 6000lb drag truck), what carb would give me the best over-all tunability and economy. As far as my research goes, the thermoquad keeps popping up. Someone mentioned that finding parts isn't the easiest. How often do you need to source parts for a TQ? I had a quadrajet on a 318 once and after a couple months of trying to tune cruise and WOT AFR, I gave up. How "easy" is tuning the TQ? Pros and cons of it? Is Demonsizzler still building and selling engine-specific TQs? What do they go for?

Thanks again for the help