Guitylerham

Hey guys,
I recently rebuilt a 4100 and converted my 2bbl engine to the 4bbl including intake manifold. So I go to start my car it fires right up but it is running poorly:
It will not maintain any RPM and when left alone will die on me. The only thing that keeps it running is blipping the throttle to make the accel. pump squirt fuel, then it revs up but soon dies. It's like it's not getting any fuel otherwise. When it's revved up, it runs fairly smoothly, it just won't sit and idle so it's really hard to adjust anything. Do you guys know what could be up? The gaskets kind of worry me. I used one that is completely open (doesn't have 4 holes punched out) for the gasket between the carb and spacer. Then I used a universal gasket with 4 holes punched out (it also has an extra set of bolt holes to fit other carbs which scares me as it could be causing seal issues). When I removed this 4bbl from an old engine, the carb to spacer gasket had four holes punched out but also three smaller holes in the middle as per my drawing. On the carb there are tubes that exit right in the center of the gasket, what are these? This is really boggling my mind! Can the fuel floats be so far off that they're causing this?

EDIT: does idle vacuum suck fuel/air in order to idle while off idle is possible by the accel pump?

Daze

The vacuum always sucks fuel at both idle and high RPM, the accelarator pump is there only to give a little extra squirt of gas durring suden changes in throttle.

First where are the idle mixture screws set at? how many turns from all the way in to where they are now?
If you increase the throttle does it stay running?
start it and spry carb cleaner around the base, if is smoothes out for a minute than you have a vacuum leek.

Start with those things and let me know what you find out and I can help you further from there

Guitylerham

Thanks for explaining that to me. On a hunch, I went back tonight and retorqued the manifold bolts as well as take off the carb and replace my new gasket with the old one that came with the carb (the one with four holes and three smaller holes) and it fired right up and I was able to adjust everything until it was perfect! So my guess is it was this specific gasket that allows this carb to work or I got things to work by simply reseating the carb and retorquing the manifold bolts too. Go figure! What gaskets do others use? I can't be the only one with problems.