well today I pulled all the plugs and checked all the cylinders compression readings. All dead on 150. Perfect according to my book. I guess it isn't an auto zone motor after all. Thank god! I already knew the block was still a 4 bolt main like it should be cause I had to pull the oil pan to fix a leak last week. I also called the chevy dealer with head casting numbers and they verified they are correct. I put in the plugs my books called for and quite a bit of power returned. Still ain't all there but better. It was r45t. I bet the r45ts would have been better with the longer reach but these are what it calls for. The r43's that were in it the past few days were pretty black. Just too cold or the carb too rich or both? I guess I will pull one in a couple days to see. I got a mister gasket advance curve kit today too. I will try to put it in tonight. According to the chart on the back of it the weakest springs it has makes a curve almost exactly like what I have. I will go with the strongest ones first and get it up to 38 at about 3000. That will actualy be where it runs at at highway speed so it should be alright. This truck has a 4.11 locker saginaw full floater in the rear. Boy they made nice rear ends back then.
Oh a moron at the only shop in town that does custom distributer work told me today that the edelbrock instructions that came with the carb are wrong and that I should hook the vaccume advance to the manifold vaccume instead of the timed port. I tried to tell him it will not idle no matter where I set the timing to when I do that unless I open the speed screw up to about 1000 rpm. Then when I put it in gear I hold my breath and hope the drive shaft doesn't come through the floor. That couldn't be a good thing. He tried to tell me that is how it should be. well I guess he won't be getting any of my business. I may be a little rusty when it comes to hot rod chevys but I ain't stupid.