Almost done update. .....Warning long.....
Some items addressed, fixed and observations.
1) leaky side cover. Gotta admit I've never had so much aggravation with trying to stop an oil leak. A Best gasket gasket, Super 300 sealer and a new side cover finally sealed the lifter gallery up. I guess I'll gain some HP from it being chrome
2) Carb issues. It's been a challenge to find "affordable" serviceable Rochester B's. So much so I finally kicked the can and punted. Funny the B on my 216 has given outstanding service. I know they're out there but the price approached that of other options so I took another fork in that route.
The fix was a set of Carter Weber 32 DFT's mounted on a Fenton dual carb intake.
3) Manifold heat is the last issue I need to address before the swap. During the running tests yesterday I discovered that the heat from the single copper line feed header setup I presently have isn't providing enough heat to the manifold to justify it.
My hand touch test could barely detect any heat on the bottom heat gallery of the intake manifold. The copper tube was plenty hot but not the manifold. So I'm either going to modify it for dual feed (a copper line from each header) or go with circulating hot water through the manifold. I've seen setups with either and some with none so I'm researching that now.
Since the original engr's thought a heated intake manifold so necessary that it added additional complexity and cost to their factory intake design and since I"m no ICE engineer, I'm going to heat it one way or the other.
I could never get the engine to run satisfacturally on the Rochester B's I've collected. At least not to my liking. Every carb I tried, including the original I rebuilt had an issue. End's up I was just inheriting others problems. I made one good carb out of many but I had already made the decision to go dual so I still needed another. Since there's no guarantee on getting a good serviceable carb, with some that could cost a couple big ones and the consensus that dual 235 sized Roch B's are too much carb for a street 244 (235 bored 0.60 over), I decided to try Tom Langdons dual Carter Weber 32 DFT setup and the results of my tests yesterday immediately justified the price. Wished I had done it earlier instead of stubbornly trying to stay period correct.
I like the progressive 2 BBl setup, the electric heated automatic choke and having a modern paper air cleaner. The carb is also called a Motorcraft 740 so rebuild parts are available from most FLAPS.
The kits (carb, linkage and adapter kits) had everything needed. Even the dual fuel supply line I had setup for the Roch B's bolted directly up using the same fittings.
I also ordered his manifold water heat kit that I will either use, sell or trade.
With all the aggravation in getting the engine running good enough to finally swap it in I'm having to convince myself to pull those manifolds one more time to install a different heat setup. Course it'll be alot easier on the run stand than once it's in the engine bay so I'm considering that also.
So in conclusion the engine finally ran like I wanted it to. I was able to set the carbs and timing via the vacuum gauge. With the 3/4 cam and dual carb setup I got the idle I wanted at 600 rpm. Lower rpm gave it too much lope and lower vacuum readings. Even going by sound and feel 600 rpm was it's sweet idle spot. Midrange and WOT rpm was very good and I finally got that smooth acceleration I wanted.
I put the original distributor back in as the FLAPS replacement wobbled too much. I had swapped it in trying to isolate what ended up being carb problems.
All in all a very good day
A couple pics:
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