Well, I made my carb switch a couple days ago as well as the HEI change. I also had to make some kickdown linkage. Honestly the kickdown was my biggest hold-up and my biggest worry. But I was able to get everything working so I thought I would post my adventures so someone else can benefit.
My truck is the new gray one that Ryan and I swapped for. It had the lean burn and it didn't run bad, but it didn't run good either. It was pretty underpowered for sure with the automatic.
After looking at things for a while I decided that with some minor tweaks to the linkage the stock 1 barrel linkage could be made to work. Whether or not it would work right remains to be seen.
First after the new Intake and carb were bolted into place was to bolt a piece of angle iron to the existing studs from the removed EGR valve. This moved all the linkage over to a more reasonable location in relationship to the new 2 barrel . As you can see I did place 2 large nuts behind the bracket to move it all over another 1/2".
Next I bolted the existing 1 barrel kickdown to this new bracket. I also cut off the throttle cable holdown (Still shown in this pic) and it will be reused shortly
I next had to modify the existing link from the carb down to the kickdown rocker. On the 1 barrel it pushed almost straight down and had the end pointing the wrong way to be of any use onthe 2 barrel. So I cut off the end and welded on a piece of flat bar to get everything going the right direction.
This arm had to have a dog leg put into it to get it to line up where I wanted it. I also drilled a hole in the dog leg for the factory spring to hook into.
The arm that goes down to the tranny also looked like it may have hit the body since it was in a new location. I removed it and put it in the vice and gave it a little bend. Yeah, about that much. It worked perfect the first time.
A simple piece of 2" strap was held in place along with the throttle cable to get an idea of where the piece need to be bent. After I bent it I took the recently cut off cable mount and set it on the end of the new bracket and welded it fast. The cable has a pretty good twist in it but it works fine.
Hooked everything up, including the 2 throttle springs. They hook to an old bracket I had in the box.
It was a good bit of work, and time consuming making everything from scratch without some plans. So maybe this will be helpful to someone out there. It obviously would have been much easier and less hassles to buy all the factory stuff. But the truth of the matter is I have only about $40 in this whole setup including the carb. And if I have to do another one it will go a lot faster. Oh yeah the carb was picked up by a friend at Carlisle for $5. After he bought it he decided it wouldn't work for him and I got for $5. It is a Holley 2280 and the factory truck fuel line bolted right up without modification.
Truck runs 100% better, and the kickdown works better than when we bought the truck. Hope this is helpful to someone.
Rick
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2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!
12.70 @ 104.6
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