Jerry,

Are you tuning your rochester carb'd stovebolt with a computer, dynamometer, etc? I'm guessing no?
I assume you do tune it however?

BB wants to tune his and apparently doesn't have the experience to tune it "by feel".
Surely making adjustments, although for driving I think we're mostly talking about jetting, and watching the O2 meter on each subsequent test drive will give him some useful feedback.
BB says nothing about tuning race engines.
Crude adjustments on a crude system seems attainable and not a fools errand. (6v to 12v is a separate issue)