The engine was a new remanufactured 302 from O'Reilly (new pistons, crank, cam, chain, rods, etc). I personally verified that these were indeed new. This engine was bought as a long block.

The block is a '79 casting and the heads appear to have been cast in 83 from what I can gather from the numbers.

From what I can gather on the build, EVERYTHING is totally stock, but replaced with new (TRW pistons for sure). So I guess I'm running a totally stock cam.

I'm running the Holley 80457s (fancy name for a polished 4160 carb) NEW and have not made any changes to it from stock (no jets, carb level, etc).

Carb is sitting on an aluminium Weiand 8011 Action Plus intake manifold.

Extremely hot ignition. MSD 6A, 8.5mm plug wires, new MSD Billit distributor, Blaster 2 coil. If you leave a plug wire off the distributor it will shoot a spark to the shock tower, carb, etc. VERY hot ignition. From what I've been reading, you may shoot me down on this as well, but I'm running the Bosch Platinum +4 plugs with .035 gap. These are 4 electrode plugs and I'm wondering if they are getting too hot. I'm not knowledgeable on the subject here so please educate me if this is totally wrong.

Exhaust is through dual Heddman Headers (3 inch outlet) into dual 2.25 inch pipes with H-Pipe and Flowmaster 2 chamber exhaust again out to 2.25" pipes to the rear. I should think the engine can flow quite nicely! Sure has a nice "rumble" at idle!

One other thing, thats been bothering me, I am running a 4 bbl carb on heads meant for a two barrel... Were there any difference except for the intake manifold? The intake has been upgraded (Weiand 8011 Action Plus, see above) but did I miss something here?

The Holley 80457s (fancy for a 4160) carb is a 4 bbl, vacuum secondary carb. It appears to work well (sounded better before the backfires actually) but I'm wondering if I blew out the power valve (even though it is SUPPOSED to be protected from a backfire. (this HAS happened).

Also, The extremely expensive MSD billit distributor is both vacuum and centrifugal (mechanical) advanced. I've not yet hooked up the vacuum advance as it seems to make the engine run worse. There are lockouts for both the centrifugal and vacuum advance. Should I disable one in favor of the other? (from the factory, both are enabled)

When I "rev" the engine, looking down into the primaries I can see a "slug" (not a squirt, but a "slug") of fuel coming from each of the primaries. Again, this is at idle to about 3500 rpm but the engine "revs" just fine when at idle, only when under a load does it spit, splatter and spit.