[davids2toys]

Well my laziness kicked me in the a**. I took the carb back off and things became more do-able. Still difficult, but do-able. The front fastener that I thought was going to be the more difficult of the two proved to be the easier of the two. For that rear one I end up using a 1/4 inch drive 12 point swivel universal socket combo, 4" extension and a 1/4' to 3/8" step up adapter (made in Taiwan), it did not break! All ten fasteners Torqued to 25 ft lbs. I also needed to compute on a few of them for the added length of the wrench. . I ended up setting the wrench at 23.5 for those. I am happy because now I have a good starting point. I will search for any vacuum leaks once I get it running again. Also took off the distributor cap off to gain access to the front driver side bolt. Good thing I did because my terminals INSIDE the cap had lots of blue corrosion on them. This was a new MSD street-fire cap less than two years ago with only 1000 miles on it!. I cleaned them off with scotch-bite along with the edge of the rotor. I applied a little dielectric grease on all the terminals inside the cap and on the edge of the rotor. I don't know if this is the smartest move. Worst that can happen is that is doesn't run. I will then just clean it off. I also put lots of grease around the sealing lip and the points adjusting sliding door of the cap. I wonder why the terminals are corroding so much?

Thanks everybody for your help. Hopefully this longer than expected thread will help somebody in the future. Biggest advice for a Blue Thunder manifold...CARB OFF!
I had an Aluminum manifold (don't recall the make) on my last Cobra. Also a 428. I routinely re-torque everything one a year. I remember doing the manifold with the carb and Turkey pan in place with no issues at all. I guess that is what threw me.
Dave