I have searched through past posts and there are lots of threads on this topic for 55/56 Fords , but found nothing on the 54 Mercury 256 y-block. I have made up my mind on replacing the tea pot and going to a later Holley/edelbrock or even autolite 4100 carb. My choice would be the smaller edelbrock, 500 cfm.
I know I need to keep the existing heads and intake manifold from the 256. The port sizes on the later 57 intake do not match up well at all with the stock 256 heads ports.
So that leaves the only option being an adapter plate between the existing smaller 256 intake and the larger later model carb. Has anybody done this swap and what did you use for carburetor and adapter plate ???? How was the throttle linkage line-up to the new style carb???? Did you also swap out the old original LOAD-O-MATIC distributor to the newer style? Any tips or suggestions on this upgrade would be appreciated.