Well I may have found the main issue with the idle mixture screw issue on the carburetor. It seems fairly obvious now. It had the incorrect base to main body gaskets and it was blocking flow from the main airhorn to the ports on the base plate. Here is a picture of the base gasket next to another Holley base plate with the same port configuration. You can see the indent of where the port is supposed to be on the new gasket. I Made some holes in the gasket to try it out. Low and behold the idle screws do something now. The idle is still hunting a bit but at least I can kill the engine by turning the idle screws in. It may still need holes drilled in the throttle plates and other tuning tricks but at least I have the idle ports opened up. I am going to order a new base gasket / rebuild kit. What is good kit that is tolerant of California crappy fur blends and potentially could be taken apart and reassembled with out gasket damage?
Oh for the record I took it out for a short test drive. It didn’t like to idle in gear but it made a huge improvement on power. I am thinking the 75 hp estimate may be pretty close. Timing is set at 18 initial right now with 34 total. I didn’t detect much in the way of pinging when I ran it either.
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