carb choice and slick size

You want it to run it's best at the track put a DP carb on it.

With that gear, you sort of run it like a glide. 3000 stall would be fine. In fact, that gear will work the converter harder!

ALL carbs will require tuning to run best.

Fuel economy suffers with DP carbs is a load of trash. Kyles Demon with a 360, XE268H, small valve J's, LD340, 750DP, 2.94 gears and a 2500 hughes converter got 20mpg on the highway and around 15 in town as long as you drove it like a sane person. Fuel economy is DIRECTLY related to your right foot!

That Demon ran 14.00 at 104+ mph in vegas with a rotten 2.25+ 60' and a fat tune up because the air was 4500+. It was babied out of the hole because of the 7.25 pegleg rear. It wasn't full throttle until about 80-100' out. My guess it's a mid to high 12 second car now that it has a 8.75 w/ 3.23's hooking up.

Bigger cam, more converter, more gear... quit being a sissy and put a 650+ DP carb on it. :)