Ideas on what's causing my click/tick/rattle noise?
Agree looks way rich, the exhaust valves in the head should be white. What did the plugs look like
The plugs looked like crap. Here they are, 1-6 from left to right. Several of them had a LOT of oil on the threads which makes no sense to me. I did have some minor leaks from the valve cover but I wouldn't think it enough to make this kind of a mess.
Concerning being too rich:
1) is the choke adjusted properly or is it staying closed?
No, it's OK - it's a manual choke and opens fully when I return the cable knob to the dash.
2) is the float adjusted properly or is it keeping the carb bowl over full
No clue, I will have to find out. The carb is a brand new Edelbrock AVS2 500. I ran it OOTB.
3) are the idle air mixture screws adjusted properly or are they set too rich
I set them according to the fairly skimpy instructions that came with the carb.
4) was your slant a Lean Burn and if so are you using the Lean Burn carb with wires going to the float bowl?
It is indeed a lean burn engine, but all that crap has been removed.
Did you notice the tailpipe huffing black smoke?
Nope, not at all. However, it did seem to have a lot of vapor coming from it. When idling for a while when I was working on setting the valve lash or tuning, the tailpipe would actually drip some on the floor. I had no head gasket or other water leaks to explain this.
Did you ever check fuel mileage?
No. I had bigger fish to fry from the get-go, so a mileage check wasn't in the cards. Just going by the seat of the pants, I'd say it wasn't horrible.
It is an expense, but a wide band AF gauge is a nice tuning tool even on a carbureted engine. I have one on the 83D150 and it is a carbed slant six
If you are going to add one I personally like the AEM units, but there are others.
I had a bung welded into the exhaust, and I have a friend with a gauge that I can borrow to set things up. That's on the agenda moving forwards.