My car was running too rich, so I leaned out the carbs and it's running much better at idle and at all RPM ranges. My hot start issues have gone away as well. But in adjusting the carbs, I noticed that the idle adjustment screw wasn't adjusting the idle.

As you can see in the pic, the idle arm isn't making contact with the idle screw and it's causing the idle to range from 1,500-2k rpms once the car is warmed up. I can press on the arm to engage the screw and the engine idles at an acceptable range just fine. I am not sure if the spring is weak or if there is something else that I need to adjust.

I cleaned linkage and lubed it yesterday, but it still doesn't reset to the idle screw. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Stronger spring may be the ticket. Maybe this one is weak or stretched for some reason. If you can lightly push it to the right position then I would just go with a stronger spring. Otherwise, if the effort is high then I would check to make sure its not binding somewhere or the butterflys are seated correctly.

 

I couldn't really see and feel any binding, maybe the spring is weak/stretched out. Thanks for the help.

 

Turns out the bracket for the throttle return spring was too low and didn't allow the spring the right angle to fully bring the idle arm against the adjustments screw. I got the Mr. Gasket spring set with the taller bracket and installed...and voila, arm is against the screw and idle down. Need to tweak a little more to fine tune.

I leaned out the the carbs 1 turn from where they were when I got it - it was running way to rich. It now fires right up, idles like a champ, and doesn't backfire when I turn it off after a longer drive. Exhaust smells normal and not nearly as gassy as it was before. Throttle response is great, and the car hums along on the interstate at 80mph in 5th like a dream.

 

Almost makes me want to put my Dell back on. Its a fun setup for sure. My hogged nikki spanks it on the low end and seems the same on the top end but the nikki doesn't roar like the Dell. Great sounds come out of those trumpets.

 

What's crazy is that the car ran like crap for years and years...the previous owners didn't know enough to realize that it was all out of sorts! Now that it's getting in line with how it should be, it's a completely different animal.

 

No such things as a bolt on carb. Always requires tuning and messing with things. Many folks that come from a purely EFI world are completely at loose ends with this and theres no computer to tell them things.