Downright Fuelish Carburetor Designs

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Richfield, MN
Downright Fuelish Carburetor Designs

Designing and building and tuning Holley type carb for custom needs and speeds. Street recreation, drag strip, oval track, class racing. Because fuel is cool!

Seasonal refreshes, repair, restoration. Maurizio Delcaro -- CFO (Chief Fuel Officer)

10/24/2026

A blast from the past! Not NOS. Recycled parts off junked carbs, found in Pontiac trunks, etc. If no blemishes, even perfect slotted fuel bowl screws, I reuse them for restorations or supply restorers, not just old school service replacements; they get the treatment! Replated in zinc and hexavalent yellow chromium conversion applied. Like the old days, all shimmery like the 1970s dance floor!

New replacements for old school carbs are zinc plated. Sometimes trivalent chromium converted, also used in most restoration coatings because the CrVI isn’t available in many places. Do not do this stuff yourself, the hexavalent chromium isn’t even allowed in the EU it’s so nasty, only use a shop that can do this for you. They made me do chemistry and toxicology stuff in college for my day job, so trust me on this one. Also made me do physics stuff, know what happens when you mix chemistry and physics? Carburetor! Me and the Kool-Aid Man say the same thing about that!

Have a happy and fuel inducted weekend!

10/11/2026

Happy Sunday! Morning shiny carburetion glamour shot. Custom Quick Fuel Q-950 for street and strip use getting BLP split-pattern squirters. I like these flying saucer looking units, the car is going to fly, too.

10/04/2026

Look at the throttle plates I popped off, got faces! To me they look concerned. Too much fuel little guys? All carbs have a story to tell 😃

10/04/2026

A new business model came to mind after I had a 1850 tunnel ram setup and other vintage Holley castings recolored. Instead of helping folks with fuel related legal problems by designing carburetors that get them speeding tickets or banned from tracks, thought of a more lucrative idea: fuelegal consultation and advisory services.

Remember late night lawyer commercials in the 1980s? "With 91 years of combined legal experience suing everybody, Scruemahl Associates will resolve your problems with garbage trucks, squirrels hoarding hazelnuts in your 1981 Camaro's air cleaner, and mistresses, and much more." Takes 91 years of experience to sue trash companies and s***s does it?

Well, these sweet pieces of Holley have 850-950 years of combined fueling experience 😀 Could I charge $1000 an hour to consult with them? That's a lot of fuelish experience right there, and more fuel solves more problems, so maybe even $3K an hour, you never know. The tunnel ram is (are) the co-chair(s) of the fueling advisory committee.

10/02/2026

Happy Friday! Sure is nice weather, got outside and did some planeing around.

09/19/2026

Got this here tote a few years ago at the Iola swap meet. Needed to stock up on old Holley service parts, and the guy wanted $50 for the whole tote, done deal. And I can always use a tote in NOS condition! Finally got around to it and freed up shelf space. What ancient treasures were there? Found out a couple nights ago. Am I the king of trash or a trashy king?

• 1967 Mopar 440 carb (3667).
• 2x 1850 basket case carbs.
• 4781 main body minus a booster.
• 4780 metering blocks.
• Mopar block.
• 2x metering plates.
• 2x vacuum secondary pods.
• 3x side-pivot float fuel bowls.
• 50cc accelerator pump lever.
• 30cc accelerator pump lever, 1960s VS style.
• 30cc accelerator pump, 1960s 4160 VS style.
• Earlier VS secondary link.
• 3x manual choke assemblies.
• Steel fuel line.
• Couple little air cleaners.
• Couple choke parts.
• Misc. recyclables and/or Napoleonic cannon grapeshot ammo.

09/12/2026

Sweet car show going in Bloomington along with lots of other stuff! Check it out if you have time! Took the 1967 AMC Marlin Holley carburetor testing device over for a while, got to park next to a GTO, as you can see mid-60s Coke bottles and fastbacks are the way to roll. A Cadillac with a beasty motor with twin turbos! That's a 131 Speed Shop customer's car. Lots of other cool units and cars from the 1970s and earlier, and I guess llamas later and food trucks, a big carnival, neat venue for cars and good weather, too.
https://facebook.com/events/s/st-bonis-fall-festival-2026/1607662354063692/

08/21/2026

Thursday night carb fun, what a beauty! This 4776 600 cfm double pumper from 30+ years ago was used briefly and traded in a few years ago after some extended time off. Said it just ran rough no matter what. Got to the secondary metering block and found two of the four emulsion jets missing, neat! Repaired that factory flaw, bent the secondary link about 132 degrees so the throttle blades fully open at WOT, upgraded the accelerator pump setup, and the standard parts. The customer asked for a manual choke, was lucky to have one that matched the carb so well. Blue pump gaskets for this one, going to Canada where it will unfortunately be fueled with an ethanol blend. Not as bad as California! Minnesota’s greatest attribute is that 91 octane non-ethanol non-oxygenated fuel is readily available here. Many of my carb peers across the country do not have it this good, definitely blessed in this regard here!

08/08/2026

Unlike yesterday's two awesome components, most vintage parts do not get refit for another 50 years of service, big surprise! Like this morning’s 150 lb. batch brought to the recyclers. Been doing this as I get through all the old carbs. Porous and/or ruined main bodies, cracked or warped base plates, bowls with cracked or dented shut (that’s the way!) fuel inlets, N&S threads chopped up, porous, etc., metering blocks and other ruined parts get recycled, back to nature they say. Some defects are obvious but some require blasting, v***r honing, etc., real good cleaning to see. Sometimes what looks like an NOS part, maybe was never used, had a major casting flaw that couldn't be whittled out, etc.

08/08/2026

Happy Weekend! Processing parts from years ago, this FuelGyvered base plate is from a disassembled Frankencarb. One of the neatest deals I've seen. Started off life as a 4781-1 base plate, now has slabbed throttle shafts with punched blades for racing cams. The custom secondary opening rate adjuster is sweet, whoever did this put lots of time and thought into it. Need to build a slayer budget racing carb with this thing!

Remembered a t**s 4780 800 cfm main body I got in trade for some resto parts. The 800 is tapered to a 1.75 bore and the ports nicely machined for the bigger bore. The transition from the venturi to the bore is unreal, the blending and smoothing must have took as long as the base plate tooling, 10 hours I bet. And it was converted to four-corner idle like the base plate. Bingo, got a carb. The main body will be colored to original. And probably use new Hollley bowls in classic gold. Maybe ATM or BLP aluminum metering blocks, we'll see, someday when I get around to it, it's going to incinerate a lot of atmosphere.

Address

Richfield, MN

Website

https://www.downrightfuelish.com/

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