My 1978 firebird is having the same problem with part of the driver side exhaust manifold turning cherry red. It has a 350 chevy and I just installed a edelbrock performer intake and 600 cfm carb with electric choke. I know the timing is off because after I got it started up and drove around the block, I couldn't get the car over 20mph and when I opened the hood, I noticed the exhaust manifold was cherry red. Could someone tell me how to set the timing? And also, could the linkage setup cause any problems like the above mentioned? I had to by throttle and kickdown adapters to hook the pontiac linkage to the new carb.