Reply to "multiple carb applications"

True side-draft Weber carb rigs are uncommon on the Pantera, as no one in the U.S. ever cast up an intake that fits.There are 4bbl adapters, and an Australian unit for EFI that reportedly can be adapted at enormous expense, or Ron Wade in Seattle also has a custom sheet-metal EFI intake that likewise can be made to work with carbs. But if you do manage to assemble such a rig, be very careful of the air cleaners you use.
Fact 1- Webers are always used as individual-runner units; one carb-barrel per cylinder. This results in very strong intake pulsations, with airflow actually reversing each time the intake valve closes.
Fact 2- Webers meter fuel into an airstream regardless of which way air is flowing. This results in the infamous 'blow-back' phenomenon where an operating engine with Webers and no air cleaner often has a visible cloud of gasoline hanging a couple of inches above the air horns. This cloud condenses & saturates any air cleaner. With side-drafts, the condensed fuel can drip out the bottom of an air cleaner- and your very hot headers are right there- next to 20 more gallons of high-test in the gas tank. This is NOT a healthy situation IMHO. Many side-draft guys use an air cleaner that has a solid bottom section with a long vent-hose to re-rout such drips. Incidently, with I.R. EFI, the cloud does not appear as fuel is not metered in the reverse airflow direction.

I also suggest NOT using a foam air cleaner of any type with any Weber setup, verticle or side-draft. A second characteristic of any Weber carb set thats tuned to run correctr fuel mixtures is slight backfires especially when cold. The fuel saturation mentioned above combined with a small backfire and a saturated foam cleaner will ignite the air cleaner. This doesn't happen with paper air cleaners. I recommend carrying a Halon fire extinguisher in ANY Weber-equipped auto, just to protect yourself. Halon will not mess up the engine compartment like a powder extinguisher. I ran Webers for years and had two fires in traffic- both with foam cleaners, one serious (eternal thanks to a passing truck driver who had a fire extinguisher! I bought my own that afternoon).

Finally, buy yourself a good book such as Haynes on Weber carbs and memorize it. Tuning and tweeking such a quad-carb setup will be constant, and properly jetting the things to begin with is a true black art, unless you don't much care how the engine runs or want decent fuel mileage. FYI, there are 5 jets and two air-bleeds per barrel (8 barrels), all removeable and all affect each other. The cheapest Weber jet is $5 or so, and its real easy to get lost in tuning. Weber carbs have been out of production since the early '80s, so all carbs including NOS that have been sitting on a shelf for 20 yrs, will likely need rebuilding, at considerable expense as well. I really recommend I.R. EFI which has the same appearance, tunes simply and costs about the same.