292 engine upgrades questions

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Thank you Esahic. A couple of searches on "youtube" should net you a few good tutorials on anything you want to know. I wouldn't take all of the info in one video to be the gospel though, watch three or four from different techs on the same subject then you'll have a good understanding of how to go about these different tests. Check with your local parts store for the equipment too. Several of them will loan you the gauges and test equipment (with a deposit,) in hopes that you'll purchase whatever you need from them.
Quite a while ago I was given An HEI distributor for my 292 and I thanked the man telling him I'd install it when I had to do some major rework on my stock distributor. That was two or three years ago and I haven't had to do anything to my points/condenser dist. yet.
As for the big 1 bbl carbs, they do what they can, but they're not the ideal configuration. The trouble is the engineers tried to come up with a compromise carb that would do everything from idle to highway RPM with a single unit. A good compromise is a small 4 bbl carb for all-round driving because with the secondary's closed you still have good vacuum through the smaller primary's for low RPM/town driving, but also have the secondary's for highway and higher RPM driving. The 4bbl is a better mileage getting carb, but what you pay for the 4 bbl and associated manifold kind of nullifies any gain in the pocket book from better mileage.