[tommyboy]

jmimac351,
The spacer plate acts as a thermal barrier which helps alot during a hot restart. Without the spacer, after shutting off a hot engine, heat from the engine would heat soak the carbs and fuel in the carbs float bowls would boil over and load up the cylinders. It made for some hard/extended cranking restarts not to mention washing down the cylinder walls.
The setup I made is a totally custom piece that addressed three or four seperate issues. You can buy individual spacers and carb adapter plates to turn one bank of the carbs 180 degrees around but you end up using three gaskets per cylinder and you still have the less desired throttle linkage setup.

I have no tuning/driveability problems.