It's been a battle all the way. But I think I won yesterday, I'll know for sure after putting 300 miles on it tomorrow to go up to sheridan days for a club parade entry.
I had lost track of that Holley 4150 core that ihon member (and recently retired marine!!) charlie brown sent me that came off goldie last year. I put the box away onna shelf and never opened it. Found it again when cleaning out all the packaging I have here to put on the burnpile. It is exactly the carb I was looking for to build for chunk so I would not have to buy a new one!
Turns out it was a previous reman (charlie May not have known that??) and the metering blocks had been butchered and re-plugged. It was a hot air choke version so an easy conversion to full electric choke by simply installing an electric cap.
So...I sterilized it and fixed several issues it had (stripped threads, etc.), then jetted it for what I thought this "built" 392 would like. And of course I installed new brass floats, the old nitrophyl floats were both "sunk".
Once installed it proved to be worse that the oem carb! So off it came again for additional work. Turned out one of the new power valves (this list 4150 uses a power valve in both ends) would hold vacuum during testing (I always confirm operation of power valves before installing), but it also leaked raw fuel even though the vacuum component sealed! First time I've ever seen that.
So I also re-jetted again after determining that this motor could not use the jetting I thought would work. That did the trick! Once it was installed again and proper electric choke operation verified, the idle mixtures were able to be controlled in a proper manner. At this point, the idle quality is as good as it can be with a breaker point distributor setup. The cam definitely is still creating an aggressive idle and will never smooth out like a stocker, that is to be expected.
So next on the engine-side agenda is to set up a fresh ignition system using a mag trigger distributor and another mallory or msd six series cd box with a suitable coil that can use the cd system to best advantage. I also need to perform the retrofit on the ac, everything needed for that is on hand right now, I'll get that done before kathy drives it up to Binder Bee with the dawgs.
If...I'm able to make it up and back to sheridan tomorrow without having to call road service for a tow, then I'll pronounce chunk as a dd for us at this point. I've now put about 250 miles on it since the fuel pump issue, this correct carburetor certainly makes it more pleasurable to drive in traffic and the cold start with electric choke is instantaneous, just like the beater truck!