The classic Holley four-barrel carburetor is an essential piece of American car lore. Even if you never touch one, you’ll still enjoy this informative look inside.

There hasn’t been a U.S. production car with a factory-equipped carburetor since, oh, around 1990, we think. But here on the car enthusiast scene, we still see them every day—on hot rods, muscle cars, and in numerous forms of motorsport. Easily the most familar carb in our world is the ubiquitous Holley four-barrel.

First used on Ford Motor Company vehicles in 1957 and eventually by GM, AMC, and Chrysler, too, the Holley four-hole has been  produced in countless flow capacities and in endless varieties over the years: vacuum and mechanical seecondaries, side and center-hung floats, single and double accelerator pumps, and so on. (To see the exhaustive catalog of carbs and parts the company offers today, visit Holley.com.)  But in principle and operation the classic four-barrels are all similar, from the monstrous 1475 CFM Dominator pictured above to the plain-vanilla 4160 unit used on the 1967 Chrysler 440 V8, as featured in our video below. And if you can master one, you can master them all.

We were impressed with this original Chrysler filmstrip when we discovered it on YouTube at the MyMopar.com channel. The presentation gets straight to the point, but it still goes into facts and info that aren’t always covered in the magazine articles. Even if you never mess with a Holley four-barrel yourself, we think you’ll still enjoy learning how it works and what all those parts do. You’ll also get to meet Tech, a recurring character in the training materials for Mopar dealer mechanics for decades. (He’s the really short guy with the gravelly voice.) Video below.