Ideal Dual-Carb FE setup for a street 390/FE?

[decooney]

Michael,
Its interesting to note that you sent your carbs to a "specialty" carb company, they set it up and jetted it for you too, and later testing results come back indicating you are "way too high" on jets, so you lower the primaries from 73 to 66, and it's still "way over fueling". For this exact reason, I myself am not sold yet on mail order specialty carb builders who test in their lab and not on your actual car dealing with your parameters such as your exhaust restriction, your intake, your heads/porting, etc... Seems like a bit of a crap shoot to me and you are proof having to redo your carb again AFTER sending to one of these full on carb specialists. I agree, if someone is starting with a mess, there could be improvements over what they had, but may not be that much better than what you, I, and others are doing in their own cars in their own environment, elevation, etc.

Several of my own local friends have been to dyno service companies, and they get their carbs setup for max torque/hp, and there are improvements in that spectrum for sure, but in many cases it just seems like driveability actually goes down some when these carbs are reportedly optimally jetted on a dyno too. It would be cool if the car was put on a dyno, and ran through a series of runs, shifts, stops, idling, back to driving just as one would on the street which is much different than a predictable track or road coarse setting. I'll never give into programmed EFI even though its the hot setup - but its just not fun like chasing these carb blueprinting puzzles is it!