It lives, ready to make some hits.

Things went pretty smoothly other than a couple of things. The intake bolt holes on the used Victor I bought were slotted, but the wrong way, needed relieved the other way. Had the intake on and off several times…finally, it fit. Grind, try, grind try.
The registers on the heads that go over the dowel pins are SNUG. Rod had told me to be aware of that. One head needed a bit of persuasion, the other just a good wiggling to seat all the way down.
Get the car running , the idle is wildly swinging all over between about 1000 to 1600 rpm with timing set correctly(34) dizzy is locked. And I hear the exhaust popping…yikes..
Sprayed brake clean all over the likely culprits, intake, carb gaskets, spacer.. no change in idle.
Pop a plug out( installed new NGK race plugs like the old ones I took out) LEAN.
When new plugs look like that, Just idling the car….
Bigger, way bigger intake. Bigger hole, less sucking on the nipple I guess.
Called a buddy and ran it by him, where are the mixture screws a…. Duh, didn’t think of that.all between 1/ 1.25 turns out.
Moved them all out to 1.5 turns, it’s better. Ended up two full turns out to make it back to loping nicely like it was before, and the idle settling in nicely between 1100-1200 rpm’s. Fixed.!! My buddy said he has been out to two turns before on smallblocks, not a big deal.
The I Wire alt doesn’t excite till 1000 rpm’s, so I like it charging as much as it can, and have never liked a low idle with any performance cam, even a 3/4 race cam like mine..lol
Had a stick on wheel weight fall off over the winter on the driver front tire, need to put that back on, install new belts, and the rear tires are pretty sketchy to take on another outing, especially a long weekend of racing Memorial Day weekend when I plan to get it out and see what she’s got. New tires are in the cards before then.
Btw, the pushrods came out exactly, exactly the same as they were with the old setup . Surprising, but was a nice break, after all the messing around with the intake.
Something else I learned about intake gaskets I had never thought about( guess I am pretty dumb)..but I had a set of 62 thou thick 1213 Felpro’s. I called Greg at Superformance gaskets to have a different thickness on hand as I had the heads shaved to get to my desired 61cc. And had no idea of the history of the intake. I told Greg all this, and he insisted I get a set of 47 thou gaskets, not something more like 30 thou like I suggested, to have a big difference to cover doing the install.
He pointed out that there are two gaskets, not just one, when I told him there is only 15 thou difference between 47 and 62… actually there is 30. EACH gasket is 15, and there are two, guess I had never looked at it that way..again.. dumb.
His 47’s were what I used, nice gaskets too.