If it's sluggish, do a compression test.
And check the slack in the timing chain.
The cylinder pressure on these teeners was pretty low to begin with, and a retarded cam is like a hole in the drinking bucket, as is poor ring seal, huge ring gaps and sunk and/or leaking valves . A teener just can'afford to lose much pressure before the low-rpm performance goes straight into " a bit doggie in off-idle acceleration"
But ti answer your quwstion
Mine liked 500/550 in gear. But it had a 2.74 low, and 3.55s, and a 2800TC,so it would fly when I nailed it.
Your results may vary.
The trick is to get the throttle valves open far enough so that when you tip them in slowly, hesitation is all but eliminated. Then you set the pump-shot to fine tune it.
But the throttle valves have to be closed far enough so that the mixture screws can fine-tune the idle quality.
Find the sweet-spot and then give her advance, until the Rs climb high enough that it bangs into gear from neutral. Then back it up some. Your Rpm-drop into gear should not be more than about 100.
BTW, that heat crossover and the EGR baggage that comes with it, can be blocked off completely for the summer, even up here at the 50th latitude. Yeah you might have to tweak the carb a bit, but it is possible to pick up a little performance by doing that. If you drive your car 4-seasons, then it will be far,far, better to make sure it is functioning BEFORE it gets cold. Then you would also want to keep your carburetor preheat system as well. This is backwards for performance tho. Up here that device is designed to maintain an inlet-air temp of 85*F and all the carb circuits are designed to work on that except at WOT. At WOT the vacuum falls, the flapper opens, and the carb gets fresh cold air, or is supposed to, from in front of the core support..
At WOT, the EGR is supposed to be inoperative, and the X-over is supposed be stagnant or nearly so. What I'm saying is at WOT.
Now at normal throttle openings that passage and EGR are doing all kinds of dumbchit that may or may not be doing anything good for your engine, lo these many decades later.
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