As I came home I got back into the foothills and hit a bumpy road. I noticed how a good jolt to the suspension resulted in a rich blip on the AFR which I attribute to sloshing in the carb. I also noticed coasting down hill in gear provided a nice lean 17 up to 18 on steep declines but with all the trial and error I decided I had room to lean the secondaries by another 4 percent, which I did.
Now I'm getting the WOT numbers that I was looking for at low to mid 12's. The engine has really come alive from where it started. It even sounds different seeming more growley as it winds up faster than ever. It is actually rather exhilarating at wide open. A little ol' hot rod 283 giving its' all is a joy to behold.
Anyhow here's the final tally on the Edelbrock 1404: I leaned it 8 percent on both the primaries and the secondaries from its out of the box configuration, and I leaned the pump shot to the lowest hole. It would be the same with a 1403 as well since they are both 500 CFM and come jetted the same. The only difference is the choke.
I think it's fair to say that the 500 CFM Eddys are good carbs but they come jetted "pig rich". The application description says "For performance applications on 305 cu in and smaller or dual quad applications. "
If anyone has any questions that I may be able to answer don't hesitate to reach out to me via this thread or a PM, and thanks for reading my thread. I tried to keep it simple just using the calibration kit from Edelbrock and went for a close enough type of calibration. I never messed with the springs or tried to squeeze every drop by altering timing or filing rods as the Astronaut suggested although I'm sure there are gains to be made if I did. I'm just not patient enough for that but I appreciate his advice nonetheless.
The distributor is a "Proform" HEI and timing was set at 15 BTC, with my total at 29 all in by 2000rpm. My vac can adds another 19 on ported. I would like a few more degrees total but its mechanical limit is non-adjustable and getting the initial beyond 15 causes hard starting in the heat. I'll recheck those numbers pretty soon because the tach I had back then was really old (and the wife was watching it.
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Thanks for reading!