I have decided drilling the throttle plates on the primaries has to be done. I want to make sure I do it right so could someone email me a picture and or give me explicit directions. I'm also putting in a ram pressue plate and there new clutch wheel since mine didn't last. I have a busy weekend coming up.

Why are you drilling the plates-did opening the secondary plates not work? Opening the secondary plates can be un-done-drilling the primaries means replacement if you want to un-do it.

How much ignition timing do you have at idle?
With that cam you might need up to 25° or so,the last 355 sbc I worked on needed it locked out.

Well I did modify the secondaries and re-did the gaskets. It did run better but then fouled the plugs out in under a day. Tonight I noticed one of the four corner idles has no effect after the gasket change so maybe that is the problem. I will redo the gaskets and look at upping the timing. My base timing was between 14-18 I can't rember now any my total was 36. I'm thinking about upping the base and pushing the total to 40 and see what happens. I am running with the vacuum advance hooked into the manifold. It appears to idle better and it likes the advance from the get go. The advance I belive was just under 10 degrees. I am a bit concerned with my idle 1000 is where it is the happiest but my timing curve starts at 900. I haven't seen any accel kits that start any higher.

What exactly is wrong with the engine?

The solution might be simpler than drilling the primaries. You did mention gaskets, so it could be a vacuum leak... or possibly a blown power valve if it's fouling your plugs.

It fouls the plugs all the time. It idles poorly. We have changed the power valve a few weeks ago with the carb gaskets. It likes to bog down but like I said last time it worked well but foulded the plugs anyway. One of the four corner idle screws doesn't work anymore so I suspect the gaskets didn't setup correctly. I did open the secondaries a bit so maybe if I get the gaskets/corner idles working it might work. I am probably going to up the timing but wonder if my curve is a tad to low as mentioned above.

Had a similar problem with a long duration camshaft in a street car.......Anyhow....I bought a new Demon that has the new Idle-Eze system built into it that is a seperate adjustment for low vacuum idle situations...........WOW!!!! .....what a difference in idle quality and the stumble is gone when going from the idle circuit to the main......Check it out graemlins/thumbsup.gif
Ken
http://www.chevelles.com/showroom/SS396Convert/nova.jpg