serious carb issues

eh guys,

i dont know the builder personally. He goes by DRC&I on ebay. I talked to a few different customers of his who all said he builds pretty good stuff, so i thought id take the chance, but the amount of money i have paid i shouldnt have had to take the whole carb apart. I emailed him last night and this morning again about the vacuum leak coming from the throttle shafts since thats something he should have checked before sending it out (something i unfortunatly didnt notice until now...and no, its not from me either) and asked him what the remedy would be, hoping he'll send me the base plate, since i shouldnt have had to go through all this b.s. for a carb that i paid to have "ready to run" in one way or another...he still hasnt answered

i set the secondary screws one and a half turns out and set the primaries the same, but only adjusted the primaries...seems to run better this way (had a major rich condition before...burned the eyes and throat, but thats gone now thankfully). The car does idle but that vacuum leak (severe whistling) is driving me nuts...the floats are set correct, the secondaries are opened just ever so slightly at idle (was idling too high before with how he sent it so i had to close em up), power valve is not opening, new base gasket and nonstick gaskets all the way around, idles around 750rpm

I figure that there must have been something in that secondary idle circuit, even if its only flowing a small amount of fuel. The builder told me that if there is a blockage there, because it cant get enough air, as soon as you turn the screw it will pull a massive amount of fuel, thus causing it to run like crap. I just hope that with changing the base plate (if thats what i have to do) i dont run into a whole other slew of problems...I have heard horror stories of guys changing their holley carbs to billet base plates and never getting them to run right thereafter