hey i have a nf fairlane 5 litre. i want to change it to carby and fit it to my zl fairlane. can anyone tell me how much horsepower those motors make in stock form. i know the heads aren"t much good for performance but how much ,if any ,power am i going to lose by changing to carby? i'm thinking of a dual plane edelbrock manifold and a 600 vac secondary holley.i'll be using the stock headers from the donor nf for now as i just want get the conversion done and running before i worry about more horsepower. also what is a good distributor to use for this conversion? can i use the one already fitted to my nf motor? or can it be modified to suit? thanks.

Mate, if it runs and drives with the EFI now, just leave it on there and retro-fit it to the ZL. It's not that hard - you can buy the modified wiring harness, etc - plus it will go way better than a dirty old carby ever will, and be much more economical.
Good luck.

Can you point me in the right direction to buy said loom? Does it use the factory computer? Is the wiring really as simple as you've made it sound? I don't want to run the 4 speed auto. I want to run a c4. Is this possible? I only wanted to go carby for the simplicity of the conversion and because I'm trying to do this on a limited budget. I appreciate the help. Thanks

They have 165kw stock. Using a carb will throw away the area under the curve in terms of performance so it's not a good idea. You will be able to use the harness and EECV from the car the engine is from. There's some time involved but it's not difficult and the money you spend on carb related bits will not have to be wasted. Smartlock can be bypassed or removed via a chip or even flashed out of the EEC.
Btw you can run a C4 but the BTR will be a much better choice and you would use the TCU from the donor car as it's already in that harness. I've done a similar conversion into my XG van and the 5.0L shorty headers fit with only require a slight massage of the downpipe to clear the pitman arm.