It's fixed. It runs perfect. No black center plugs, no smoke from exhaust and it idles back down immediately.
For those of you having the same
oil consumption/ middle two black plugs, pinging at low speed acceleration.....a new intake gasket fixed the problem completely. Installed it with Hymolar racing blue. Stickiest stuff known to man.
The last issues was refilling the cooling system and getting rid of the air. Lots of posts on strange ways to do it on a small block. After a bit of frustration, I just decided to unscrew the water temp sending unit on top of the manifold and fill the tank until water came out of the sending unit hole. Screwed the thing back in and haven't had a problem since. Water level and temp is perfect.
Thanks for all the help and advice. Taking that thing down to the open valley with the motor in the car was the easy part......unplugging and plugging back in the FI system was a challenge, but I learned a lot. She is good to go and I'm back on the road. Yahoo.
Wayne