This is more for education and curiosity, but ya never know.

I cut my eye teeth on Holley carbs as my performance choice - from 3 barrels, tri power Fords, 750 and 780 CFM 3310's but I'm now am using Edelbrock Performers and really do like their ease of tunability. After reading some posts here and elsewhere, I'm interested in what folks have to say about the Quadrajet. And why. The Eddy's perform well, but in the age of $3.50+/- 93 octane gasoline, is there a better choice, like that Q-jet for day in and out cruising with only a stomp of the gas pedal to have lots of performance. My chief complaints with the Edelbrocks have been ease of starting after sitting for a couple weeks and very rich idle and low end. Yes, I know that the idle and low end richness can be somewhat corrected with jet and rod changes as well as other adjustments. I've done a lot of that, but it's still a bit too rich.

Then of course, what can be used to correctly fit the Q-jet on a, for instance, a Performer RPM manifold? These intakes have a carb base design for the Holley as well as the Performer carbs - the carb side long oval holes are too small at least for the rear. Adapters will tend to choke down the flow and actually add a venturi effect.

What kind of performance gains would I expect to feel (this is seat-of-pants) vs say a 600cfm Edelbrock? Gas mileage? Guestimates of course accepted

OK guys, food for thought and discussion. I'm nowhere ready to spend the several hundreds of dollars to convert. And if I do, and for some more bucks it might just be the FAST injection, but that's grist for another discussion.