man, this thing is just fighting me at every turn!
my friend pulled the carb apart, and reported that it was pretty gummed up with old bad gas, mainly on one side (probably from when I had the engine sitting out), he cleaned it as best he could with carb cleaner and told me to give it a try.
there is a thin aluminum spacer between the carb and manifold , it had a gasket on each side, so I went to o'reillys and picked up a couple gaskets.
put the carb on and did get it to run for a few seconds, but not good, so when I was checking under the hood I see "smoke" (exhaust) coming from under the left side of the carb.
I get the carb off and check it out and the manifold has a passage under the carb that exhaust goes through to heat the base of the carb up, one of the gaskets I got did not cover the hole, so I go back to o'reillys to find the gasket, it is marked 65-67 327 and 396 holley carb only. they have to order it.
in the meantime I completely disassemble the edelbrock carb,-but not before checking all the others I have -apparently I have 5 total!!_ but all the others have small primaries and big secondaries, and 2 are electric choke, the one I have for this has the same size primaries and secondaries.
I got it all apart and soaked it with carb cleaner until I could see it streaming through every hole.
.....so yesterday I put it all back together, correct gaskets, carb works, you crack the throttle , and the gas sprays out,and the thing will not fire!!!
just cranks over and tries a tiny bit to fire every few cranks, but will not start up
..call my friend again, with the new problem, and he said now it is probably ignition
so I will pull a plug and see if I am getting spark, and I will probably have to chase this with money -new plugs, wires, cap/rotor-... if this fixes it, at least all that stuff will be new...