What Happened to Edelbrock's new VRS-4150 Carburetor?

[1972ho]

Yep like most things?????

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

That carb would have come from a supplier in China that makes them already.
When I worked at Edelbrock, we were offered billet carbs made by the same company that makes a billet carb (I think it was FST).
The price was shocking low. The machine work and anodising looked perfect.

The problem at Edelbrock is that all of the motivated and talented middle-aged Engineers have moved-on to better paying jobs.
I am glad to have experienced "peak Edelbrock". Now that Chad has left, they are doomed, he was the go-to guy for most engineering decisions.
Brent has moved into marketing.

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Input from marketing can be demoralizing too. After a year of getting a manifold to perform as well as the best Ford manifolds, marketing want the shape of the plenum to have a different style...killed 25 HP. Ruined the product. It being aluminum was too heavy anyhow compared to the plastic Ford manifolds.

[BradH]

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Are you saying E's own machine shop was too jacked up to finish the heads properly? How long ago was this? Thx

[1980RS]

That carb would have come from a supplier in China that makes them already.
When I worked at Edelbrock, we were offered billet carbs made by the same company that makes a billet carb (I think it was FST).
The price was shocking low. The machine work and anodising looked perfect.

The problem at Edelbrock is that all of the motivated and talented middle-aged Engineers have moved-on to better paying jobs.
I am glad to have experienced "peak Edelbrock". Now that Chad has left, they are doomed, he was the go-to guy for most engineering decisions.
Brent has moved into marketing.

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Input from marketing can be demoralizing too. After a year of getting a manifold to perform as well as the best Ford manifolds, marketing want the shape of the plenum to have a different style...killed 25 HP. Ruined the product. It being aluminum was too heavy anyhow compared to the plastic Ford manifolds.

I have several FST carbs, all work very well, run good and were very close settings out of the box. My 850 FST vs performed flawlessly at the track last year. Cannot wait to test it with a few changes this year.

[1980RS]

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Are you saying E's own machine shop was too jacked up to finish the heads properly? How long ago was this? Thx

Ya, I'm betting Edeljunk doesn't care much. It sure show with the sheety machine work I encountered with a screwed up 409 Intake I got in 2017, like pulling teeth to get them to admit their mistake. Won't but another new product again from them.

[PRH]

Honestly, unless the profit margin on the new carb is huge, I don’t think it will ever be released.

[HQM383]

Frustrating the consumer there it is on their website like it’s ready for the taking. If they are trying to build hype it won’t work in the age of instant gratification.

[ProPower engines]

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Are you saying E's own machine shop was too jacked up to finish the heads properly? How long ago was this? Thx

Ya, I'm betting Edeljunk doesn't care much. It sure show with the sheety machine work I encountered with a screwed up 409 Intake I got in 2017, like pulling teeth to get them to admit their mistake. Won't but another new product again from them.

That seems to be the way the future is going for them now.
They have no inventory to speak of yet there always seems to be a few intakes on Jegs or Summits sites but thats all.
The moving of the edelbrock main location to Arizona some where has presented them with more issues and with the staff loss's in all areas of the company I think it will be several years before they get back to any sort of pre covid production and sales volumes.

Maybe it will not be long till the Race Winning Brands group buys up all the major players in the performance parts industry.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Engineering at Edelbrock was fun in some ways, but the problems out in the manufacturing shop are too frustrating and demoralizing to design for.
I designed an RB Chrysler head for 383,426,440 engines that was a huge improvement over the previous head.
The foundry tooling was made by an outside supplier that did a great job.
The casting came out great.
The machine shop scrapped pallet loads of them, never made a usable head that I heard of.

Are you saying E's own machine shop was too jacked up to finish the heads properly? How long ago was this? Thx

I left in 2019.
The shop has been like that for a very long time.
Most of the equipment are 20+ years old. CNCs with 50kb of memory. (That's right 1/3 of an old floppy disc)
Set up guys don't have good tools, someone would steal them.
The company doesn't even give machinists rags when they need them.

So they just bolt the fixture on the machine anywhere, run the program and send the part to inspection.
Then edit the program by hand typing, run it again and repeat. If they get a usable part before they run out of castings, they keep making them.

Now that the Torrance building is sold, I was told some of the equipment went to San Jacinto where the foundry is, no one with the talent needed to fix the problems there would live near San Jacinto.
The foundry with flame and smoke and dust all around, and very loud sounds in that hot weather makes one wonder if hell would be any worse. No good CNC programmer, or machinist would do that job.
Especially these days in California, they could easily double, maybe triple their income working in Aerospace or Silicon Valley in shops with waxed tile floors and free catered food.

I think some may have been moved to the Comp Cams location, I have no insight as to whether that is better.

[Chris_Hamilton]

https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/edelb ... FA6B9FD91F