Now for some Vette Books for the hands-on Corvette owners/devotees.
This first bunch deals with those devices that many swear by while others swear at: Carburetors and fuel-injection systems.
Our own Dave Emanuel weighs in with How To Rebuild and Modify Carter/Edelbrock Carburetors: Performance, Street and Off-Road Applications. Each chapter covers a specific area such as carburetor types, carburetor selection (for your specific application—how to go about it the best), carburetor function, carb modifications and tuning, rebuilding tips, plus appendices showing “exploded” views of the Carter ThermoQuad, AVS, AFB and WCFB. It’s of particular interest to restorers--whose pre-’66 Corvettes came with Carters as standard equipment--as well as to Vette Rodders. For the latter group, it includes info and images covering also the Edelbrock carburetors that came about as the result of Edelbrock’s acquisition of what was left of the Carter Carburetor Company during the ‘80s. If your Vette came with one of these atop its engine—or you think it’ll be an improvement over what’s on there now—you need this book in your reference library (You know, the one out in your garage above your workbench, where you’ve got your old GM and Fisher Body manuals stashed.)GET IT:Car Tech Books800/551-4754www.cartechbooks.comList Price: $24.95 + Shipping
If you can remember when GM’s Rochester Carburetor Division came up with the Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor, you likely remember the jokes you made about The General’s “imitation Holley,” or you put it down for its supposed lack of performance and ability to modify into a serious piece of high-performance hardware.
Shame on you.Car Tech Books has these carbs covered in Dave Ruggles’ How To Rebuild and Modify Rochester Quadrajet Carburetors. Not only will you get the basics of Q-jet design, assembly and operation in this book, you’ll also get detailed tech info on rebuilding them, as well as how you can turn a much-maligned, mass-produced item into a carburetor that can flow the volumes of air and fuel you’ll need to make big power out of that V-8 below it. It doesn’t contain jokes and put-downs you can tell about people who used to joke about and put-down Quadrajets. But, after digesting what’s in this book, you’ll come up with plenty of those yourself.GET IT:Car Tech Books800/551-4754www.cartechbooks.comList Price: $24.95 + Shipping
If your Corvette came with a Holley under the hood as an OEM item (as they did from ’64-’72, depending on what engine the car was built with), you’ll want to get Des Hammill’s How to Build and Power Tune Holley Carburetors. Now out in an updated and revised edition, it’s filled not only with detailed text, illustrations and photographs showing the various Holley carburetors’ workings and how to rebuild and tune them, there’s also a goldmine of information regarding how to identify (by look and by part number) the individual components that go into correctly-restored and properly-tuned Holleys. As with the preceding carburetor books, it’s of interest not only to restorers—so their prized rides have a correct AND properly-functioning Holley—but also to Vette Rodders looking for the secret to building a period-correct piece of speed equipment to go on top of their crate/stroker/otherwise non-stock engine. GET IT:Veloce Bookswww.velocebooks.comList Price: $39.95 + Shipping
Does that late C3 or early C4 you just bought have a malfunctioning fuel-injection system that you’ve dubbed “Cross-Fire Rejection?” Or are you looking to get the optimum amount of power out of the EFI system that’s on your daily driver? Charles O. Probst covers those areas, and lots more, in How to Understand, Service and Modify Corvette Fuel Injection & Electronic Engine Management: LB3, L98, LT1, LT4, LS1, LS6, ZR-1. Packed with nearly 400 pages of information that includes over 100 pages worth of model-specific wiring diagrams, trouble codes and test specifications, it’s the definitive work on the workings of these fuel-delivery systems. There’s a survey of the different types of fuel injection systems used, such as throttle-body injection (TBI), multiport fuel injection (MFI) and sequential fuel injection (SFI). You’ll also find chapters on engine control fundamentals, emissions and fuels, sensors, actuators, the electronic control module (ECM), and fuel delivery as well as ones on tuning, troubleshooting and servicing. Probst also wrote detailed books on Bosch and Blue Oval EFI systems, so you know you’re getting top-grade information from someone who knows his subject matter very well. GET IT:Bentley Publishers800/423-4595www.bentleypublishers.comList Price: $34.95 + Shipping