I got the original carb back from Cliff's High Performance
http://www.cliffshighperformance.com/ yesterday and immediately bolted it back on. Now I can put the 1972 donor carb that Cliff did a month ago, back on Gramma's Firebird where it belongs.
The car runs awesomely now (if that is an actual descriptive term). It promptly breaks the tires loose just by hitting the gas pedal hard. You can't even tell when the secondaries kick in, it's that smooth of a transition. Between the HEI distributor that Rocky Rottella set up for the car and Cliff's carb work - WHOA NELLY!
She still pings under hard throttle, though. I can't wait to pull the engine over Thanksgiving weekend and swap the cam out for the new 068 Melling cam I have sitting in the box.
I figured out that the rear main seal only leaks oil when you do a hard throttle run. So maybe it's a combination of a crappy rope seal and too high a pressure oil pump. I bought a nice melling M54DS oil pump which is also sitting on the shelf waiting for holiday engine pull time.
