Guys,

Thanks for everyone's help !!! I'm going to eat a little crow on this one. Feel free to have some fun with it.

Went back through and re-set the valve lash on everything. Restarted, same popping noise. Played with idle timing and still the same issue. Was taking the distributor cap off and the plug wires looked weird. Long story short: I had wires 2 and 7 flipped and firing in reverse order. So I had it firing 18346527. Swapped the wires, fired right up and accelerated smoothly off idle to half throttle.

Target is currently on my back. LOL. Thanks again guys. sometimes it's the little details you overlook, even after someone points it out in the first response.

Mike