[Mike_The_Grad]

Steeveedee, thanks for your opinion and experience with the 1406. Its brand new out of the box and I'm the only one to adjust anything on it. Well I spent the weekend swapping intakes and carbs. And it literally took me all weekend. I had to reconfigure my throttle linkage, throttle return springs, carb mounting studs, carb insulator gasket, brake booster vacuum line, wire in the electric choke, reconfigure the fuel supply line from pump to carb. After all that, it runs. Not well, but it runs. It's got a huge hesitation from idle, runs hotter than normal just going down the road, and gets worse mileage than my qjet did. But I have been tuning it. I moved the accelerator pump rod to the inside hole, this helped out quite a bit. I also installed the chrome fuel line that edelbrock sells that drops the fuel inlet down and to the front of the carb. I set my timing at 12° BTDC. And as I was driving through town I would pull over every 1/2 mile or so into a vacant parking lot and would trim the i.m.s. a bit and adjust the idle speed. I actually got it to run quite a bit better. But no adjustment can change the fact that it's just running to lean for my engine. So I'm picking up a Calibration Kit tomorow to hopefully make it run right.

Trust me, I'm not happy about the change. I'm happy that my friend came through in a huge way, but I knew that it would come at a price because I was changing from my stock setup to aftermarket and it was a PITA. But I'm trying to remain hopeful that I'll have this thing dialed in by the end of the week.
I'll post pictures of the qjet internals but they dont compare to seeing it with your own two eyes. How i know for certain that the main body casting is indeed cracked is because as i had the airhorn top off, I noticed the fuel evaporating from the float bowl and the surrounding chambers in the main body so I started cleaning the venturi bores with qtips soaked with Berryman's Carb Cleaner because there was brownish residue in them. Well as I did this I noticed they stayed wet with something. Berrymans evaporates pretty quickly. So what i did was wipe the backside of the venturi booster walls with just straight gasoline that i soaked up out of the float bowl with a qtip. And sure enough it soaked through to the interior of the venturi bores. So I kinda took a step away and came back to look at it, as I started looking for hairline cracks I could see them on both primary booster bores. That's when everything clicked for me as to why I had a bunch of unexplainable symptoms that would come and go. Which was almost always related to when the truck was warmed up and driven for a while. Every morning I get in it and drive it, it drives great. But after about 20 minutes or so and warmed up it would change. when ever I parked it and would try to start it after more than about 10-15 minutes it would take a few seconds to start. Also the float had a leak. So as many of you might suggest a fuel boiling issue or a vapor lock issue. I've only experienced that one time in the 14 years I've owned the truck. And it was indeed both of those things together.
Back a few months ago when it was 110° out and I hit 2 of the longest lasting stoplights I swear I've ever encountered in my life back to back in 2 blocks, I knew things weren't gonna be right when I went to start it 5 minutes later. It was so hot under the hood I couldn't grab the wingnut off the aircleaner for almost 5 minutes. I could hear the fuel boiling in the carb. But I got it running after clearing the accelerator pump and airing out the carb bores. So the symptoms I would experience daily for the last 4 years are different than this.

I've had a exhaust gas analyzer connected and tuned on the spot only to be told it needed to be left with the shop for a day. Which I never got around to. Plus, the carb shop that did the exhaust gas test also did both of the first 2 rebuilds never seen the carb on my truck. I took it to them for a bench rebuild because my truck wasnt running or even completely together then. The next time I did the rebuild myself. So it's most likely self inflicted. Which I guess it's better to be mad at myself rather than some shop or someone else. It's a reality check to me and a reminder that I need to recognize my limits and know when to go to the professionals and let them do what they do every day for a living.