A. the 3 carbs were what we had between the two of us and another friend from previous projects. so they were bought and paid for a long time ago. so, the $600 spent on the AED wouldnt not have bought a set of AFRs. and if we wanted to do that we just would have put my TEA 225 high ports on his motor. not to mention these cleveland 4 barrel closed chamber heads flow over 300 cfm, so do really think just because a head says 'AFR' on it the car would be faster? its a 10.5:1 flat tappet, pump gas motor that runs 6.90s in the 1/8 on motor. its a high 10 second combination with a bunch of old garbage we had lying around. the 830 was leftover from my 347 that went 6.40s
103 on the motor. but back to topic, the AED picked up a tenth and a half in the 60'. im sure a set of AFR stock valve center windsor heads that flow the same or less with the valve way to close to the cylinder wall would have picked up the 60' up too, or not.
B. you think we didnt change squirters, jets, and air bleeds on all of them? we did. we spent 6 months tuning this thing and hadnt picked up anything and all the holleys had a stumble. and the holley tech line had no idea why. the 650 had the least stumble but was down 3 mph to the 830 and had to be short shifted due to running out of breath.
C. we havent even tuned on the AED yet, we set the idle mixture.
D. we spents hours on the phone with holley trying to make their carbs work. appearantly there is something different about the AEDs and the holleys. maybe they atomize the fuel and emulsify better. get what you like. i just report what worked.