Tall spacer from carb to air cleaner

[tdangle]

I'm getting ready to install a new engine in my truck and was wondering if there is any advantage to keeping the tall spacer between the carb and the air cleaner?

I know the breather hose goes to it, but I have a dual snorkel air cleaner that also has the fitting for the breather hose.

[sick472]

My single snorkel will not fit on my Edelbrock without the spacer (on my 72), nor will the stock breather fit on my Holley on my 85. The bottom of the breather hits carb mechanisms and needs some amount of upward spacing. This may not be the case with Quadra-Jets, but I'm not blessed with those.

One might argue some advantage due to more laminar or less turbulent air flow from a spacer, but those benefits will be very minimal and only really count when squeezing every bit of HP out of a race engine.

[tdangle]

That's kinda what I was thinking. Originally I had the single snorkel air cleaner with the tall spacer on a quadrajet. I changed the single snorkel out to a factory repo dual snorkel but kept the spacer. I think on my new engine which comes with a Holley carb, I will just run the dual snorkel without the spacer.

[Andy4639]

As stated some breathers want work with out them just because they interfere with the linkage and some even hit the HEI cap. I have them on mine just clear everything.
performance wise they do nothing that I can tell.

[toolboxchev]

The spacer does do some good with air velocity, how much is not known.