Tuning a Carb Engine

[danhay]

Chaps,

I was reading a post about a catasrophic engine failure caused by a carb being out of balance. I.e. the overall output of the engine was not lean or rich, but 1 cylinder was obviously running way too lean and it burnt out!

My question is...
Can anyone give me some advice on tuning my engine with respect to timing/carbuerretion?

I've got a 2 litre V8 with 4 twin choke Carbs and 2 distributors (so no more complex than 2 minis!).

I'd like to make sure everything's in balance and hopefully cure a lack of throttle response when it's been idling for a while.

Can you recommend any books or courses for tuning such an engine? Or give any advice at all about techniques or tools required.

Thanks in advance.

Dan

[danhay]

Thanks Nev for an excellent link.

Thanks too to everyone who replied. Am thinking of practising on a motorbike engine first, to get the hang of it before tackling the Ferrari.

Dan

[danhay]

Thanks again Nev.

I recently forked out £45 for a workshop manual when I could have downloaded it for free - D'oh!

...Although a Ferrari workshop manual with greasy fingerprints on it does have a certain amount of coffee table cred