cerial - how old are you (no offense)? Really not trying to be a jerk but if youve been around motors long enough that would be one of the last things you would mention.. carbs can make just about as much power as efi and run just as good so thats seriously not even a consideration sorry-
I recently just tuned 40.
I been modifying cars since I was 12. Before that it was lawnmower and snowmobile engines powering golf carts and gocarts.
Father had a auto body business, uncle had a towing business.
I have personally titled over 100 cars.
I have driven over 80 of those
Wheels up when stopped 6
End over End 1
Caught trees 4
To many slide off's and recovery's to mention
My current preference is Chevy, Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Ford, Tesla in that order
I am not against carburetors. You run a series 1 beetle or a MGB or a Mini that thing will do just fine with a carb. I love side drafts in general and especially on motorcycles. I scare other people and frankly myself on bikes so I stay off of them.
What I am against is taking something that works and going backwards because your afraid of it. Furthermore doing this when it will waste money to do so.
I grew up tuning very dumb fuel injection when tuning these systems was hard. Slapping a carb onto something back in the Early 90's made sense. It eliminated the limitations. But around 2000 systems became easier to tune and things began to get better across the board. You were finding consumer engines with forged internals, overhead cams, aluminum blocks, that were putting out impressive numbers with and without forced induction.
Jump ahead 10 years and there is a power jump as everything is running a turbo or higher compression. You see consumer engines with DLC materials and active fuel management several times smarter then those dumb 90's setups and much smarter then carburetiors.
Jump ahead another 10 years(2020) and things have settled down a bit focused mostly on safety. Just in time to get into when the electric/ice battle is really starting to heat up.
Once a mass produced easy to convert to standalone AC motor hits the market with a pack that is able to convert a ice engine over for under $5000(parts) it will change the game. We are not there yet(battery or charging station wise either) so everyone is still using the good old LS. Maybe 2030 maybe later you will be able to take that classic Chevelle pull out the entire drive train, Slap a battery pack/controller under the hood and have a electric axle out back that will crush even engines making boost in the 20's.
To run a carb on a LS engine you need to drop around a grand into parts to make the conversion. The benefit is that it is "simple". But, the thing is that it is not.
Your taking a system that is highly adaptable to several situations instantaneously and replaced it with a vacuum based carb where the adjustments and timing run on a fixed curve.
This means that when you push the limits of lets just say compression and come across some junk fuel that carburetor is going to have that engine running horribly. Other things to consider are elevation changes, ambient temperature, and around a dozen more that a factory LS fuel system just does better then a Carburetor.
They had the sense to keep it port injection not direct so the injectors last. They used individual computer controlled coils(learning the lesson from omnispark) so the spark is strong and easily adjusted, they stuck with a simple proven throttle body design, they even kept the single cam push rod design(Something I was hoping the C8 would change). Most importantly they kept the fuel mapping simple. Simple enough that even if you have never tuned a engine before you can take someones seup that is close to your setup and run there map being close to perfect.
It has been refined into a platform where you can do what you want with it and you do not need to jump through complicated tuning hoops to do it.
You want to talk simple.
Rebuild a classic 70's Edelbrock then rebuild a TBI throttle body.
Change jets at a rest stop then adjust the fuel map on a LS engine
Buy a SBC that someone else has heavily modified requiring hours of detective work on what has been done or plug in a programmer into a fuel injected engine to see what is actually going on.
Some setups are just good for the application and do not need modification. You play with enough engines and you will find the benefits and pitfalls of every type of engine. If you are happy running a carburetor on a carbureted engine or a early fuel injected engine then run it. But taking something that works and going backwards just to do so.
Your money man if your more happy with a carburetor save yourself the headaches and run the 383
