Fine Tuning a 360 Magnum with a Brawler "Double Pumper"

Holy cow that's a lot of information to digest lol.

I guess I'll add some more information if it helps you. I have the AX-15, geared to I believe 0.79OD, stock tire size 235/75r15 @ 41psi, and 3.55 gears which brings by 65mph rpm to actually probably about 2200. At 70 I'm at 2300. Vacuum advance is hooked to full vacuum, not ported. I still have the electric choke hooked up but I plan to swap over to a manual as I'm annoyed with how slow the choke opens when its warm outside.

You said a heated air system to pull air off the exhaust manifold like the stock setup did, did you mean pre-EFI Dakotas? I still have the stock intake setup minus the hose that went from the air cleaner to the radiator support so its pulling in air from the middle of the engine bay, there was never anything hooked to the stock manifolds (at least on my truck). I do have the PCV hooked under the primaries like you said. I also have the stock radiator fan that came on the Dakota, with a stock style clutch. As many other Dakota owners have said, this setup runs way too cold all the time. I think in the year and a half I've owned this truck I've only heard that clutch fan kick in one time and it was over the summer when I was running the v8 on EFI still, I was sitting at a light for 10 minutes when it was 105 degrees out and it kicked on when I started moving for maybe 15 seconds then it shut off and never turned back on. My temp needle never even makes it halfway on the gauge, always at about a quarter of the way up and with a laser thermometer it reads 150-160 on the radiator end caps. (This is with the stock v6 and the current v8.)

I do currently have shorty headers (can't run long tubes on a 4x4), but from them back its the stock exhaust with a flowmaster (not going to make a noticeable difference). I do plan soon to get the truck to a shop and have 2.5 inch pipe from the headers back with an h-pipe and magnaflow straight through mufflers installed.

Initially when I built the engine I planned to run the stock EFI, which is why I chose the cam that I did as it was "the largest cam you can run on the stock computer." And it ran (it didn't), but I looked into tuning and how much it would be and with my dad having a past of carbed mopars I said screw it and bought a carb. When I had the stock setup on the carb (#71 primary, #74 secondary, 6.5PV) and timing set at 12 degrees, on my drive from Fairfax to Radford it got 6mpg highway (yes you read that right). On my drive back for winter break a couple weeks ago, after having the #66 jets and timing at 14 degrees initial it got just about 16mpg hwy. On a couple of weeks worth of testing with the #68 jets I was getting 7mpg city/12mpg hwy.

Talking about the timing and throttle not being open enough now... I would imagine that when you say my throttle isn't open enough you mean my curb idle is way too low to the point that the transfer slot isn't being utilized? Fully warmed up with timing at 14 degrees, vac advance hooked up, the engine wants to idle super high, as such I lowered the curb screw not really thinking about it. Current idle is about 700rpm warm (though it fluctuates for whatever reason). If I'm correct in my thought process, if I turn the initial timing down to 10, then turn the idle mixture for a rich but happy idle (highest vacuum, back off eighth turn), and set the idle with vac advance hooked up to 800 or so would it open the throttle enough like you mentioned?

I really need to get an AFR hooked up, but when I ran the 68s, my plugs were black and I would see faint black smoke coming out of the tailpipe when on moderate throttle (before secondaries). To further prove my point about it being rich, on cold starts when there is condensation in the exhaust it literally will throw wet black soot onto the car next to me.

If any more info is needed please feel free to ask, I'm sure I can provide.