Welcome to the site –I’m just down the road in Portland and have among my collection a 1971 Chevy ½ ton, 350, automatic, Edelbrock Performer manifold, Hooker headers and an Edelbrock carb. I have the 1806 Thunder series, but they all seem to have the same problem out of the box – they run rich.

I had to go a size leaner on metering rods and jets to get decent performance.

The popping sounds like you’ve got a bit of a timing issue. I’m running a stock HEI with 8 degrees (initial w/vacuum disconnected) and it runs fine. The cam break in should not have had any effect on timing, my guess is that you may be off a bit.

What cam did you install?

Did you do also install new lifters?

As a final note – if you replaced a well tuned and working stock 780cfm Quadrajet with a 600 or 750 cfm Edelbrock on an Edelbrock Performer manifold, you may get a bet better mileage but you will not have the snap the Q-jet provided. There’s a lot of disappointed folks out there who have replaced Q-jets only to find out they’re not such a bad carb after all - in fact, one of the best factory pieces to ever come out of Detroit!

If you have an Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold and an Edelbrock 1413 you’ll get some real good 2500 – 5500 performance (depending on your cam).

Give us a bit more information and I’m sure you’ll get lots of help.

Regards,
Glenn