When you buy an Edelbrock carburetor new, it comes with a tuning guide. You might want to find one of those.
If it's an Edelbrock carburetor you are talking about, as others have mentioned, they come with a great tuning manual. I have Edelbrock carb's on both my cars and they were just about ready to run out of the box. More info is needed!
Make sure you set the float levels, as mentioned in the manual. If it's running good, you're probably fine. If you want to get really confused, you can get a wide band O2 sensor and AFR gauge.
For those with reading comprehension issues, or those that are just visual learners. Edelbrock also make videos to explain tuning thier carbs.
^^^^ what Jim said. The jet size sounds about right. How long have you run the plugs? Assuming you are using E10 gas? That carb will not tolerate E15, which is being sold in more places now.
Good points here. The plugs may have to run-in for a while before you can "read" much helpful information from them. Modern fuels don't leave much in the way of deposits like back in the old leaded fuel days. Besides the plugs' bright white appearance, what else about the way it runs and drives leads you to believe that you have a lean mixture condition?
m - Take a close up picture of deep inside of the plug. Where the steel body and the porcelain come together. In general, your plug looks just fine, NOT too lean. But it will tell more if we could see deep...inside of the plug. Mike
These guys are providing all the info and pointers to get you there. Modern fuels don't 'color' like it used to, so you need to show the 'ring' down on the porcelain. E has a ton of resources to help get the carbs dialed in. An O2 will help with tuning if you are willing to spend the money and have a bung added (close as possible to the port). Finally, seat of the pants can provide some indication of lean conditions. Stumble on tip-in, surging at light throttle/load, feeling like it's holding back on slight inclines.
Not that I ever fully mastered it, I thought that the manual that came with the Edelbrock carb was alone worth what I paid for the carb.
The spark plug looks normal for modern fuel. It'll stay white for a long time before getting any color if the carb is right. As for the tuning manual...it's really not difficult to understand if you read carefully and look closely at the diagrams. It will require a tuning kit to change anything besides float level and idle mix, but there's a very good chance this carb is jetted really close for your stock 350 and won't need any jet or needle changes. If it feels like it's running well, keep running it! Terry
I sort of remembered there was a story picture and yours might have been it, just got lucky. The HAMB has been plenty mellow lately, lots of good help and liking each other's posts. I like to poke fun now and then and saw you did too. I figured you'd not be offended and take it in the spirit intended.
If it has 0 miles, that means you're reading a plug that's only idled. The 2 screws on the front of the carb, one at a time, turn them in until it starts to stumble, count the turns out from there until it starts to stumble again, and go halfway back in.
Unless you put in a wideband gauge you won't know unless you run it, and so far you've only idled it from the sounds of it. The carb at factory settings is very unlikely to be lean enough in a 350 to cause major damage to your engine. Set the idle mixture as Lloyd stated in the post above mine and then you need to drive it a bit to check the jetting. If the thing surges at steady steady cruising, then your jetting is quite lean. If it doesn't, drive it. Pay attention to sounds and smells, but don't be afraid to put some miles on as is.
Unless you're racing or hauling a heavy load down the highway you won't do any real harm to your engine. For idling and light in-town cruising, if it's really that much too lean it will stall out and keep you from doing any damage. Keep in mind that adjusting the mixture screws on the front of the carb will only affect your idle mixture. This is a good time to connect a vacuum gauge to a source of full manifold vacuum. What you're looking for at idle, with no load on the engine, is the highest, steady vacuum reading. As stated above, if you get into stumbling, hesitations, or surging at higher speeds then you may have to get a little deeper into the carb to do a bit more adjusting.
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