[vectorit]

Just chimin in on the obvious... Did your "hot rodder" buddy mess with the plugs? if he did, he might have switch the 5 and 7 plug wires... It will fire up, but will spit and pop like you describe. Are all the plug wires good? Havin headers are notorious for burning the wires causing shorts and bad engine performance. Vacuum leaks? is the Edlebrock mounted to a stock spread bore GM intake? or some other type? When I ran one of those I had to use a special square bore plate, and I was running a Edlebrock perfomer intake. With out it you will only have a sliver of gasket contact surface. If it slipped or dried up, then you will have a nasty vacuum leak causing some of the symptoms you described.