more on my frustrating week with this motor. if you guys arent as fed up with me as i am this motor, maybe you want to help me. rebuilt carbs again! replaced all sorts of gaskets again. midleg, water jackets over the cyl heads etc. timed it as per the manuals instructions. drained carbs, pulled all but #1 spark plug and grounded wires and had wife cranking it while i ran the timing light. checked pointer with .462 with dial caliper from hardware store. good. cranking time was set at 0 and the motor calls for 11 deg. atdc. adjusted that. set the max timing at 18 deg. btdc cuz the manual told me to. after this i need to set idle in gear to 600 rpm. well the motor surges. has for a while, tryin to figure why. i have the fancy timing light with the tachometer in it and heres where it gets interesting! hook the inductive clamp to cyl 235 and i get 1100 to 1200 rpm. have it high to keep it from stalling hook it to 4 or 6 and its reading around 2200ish. hook it to cyl 1 and in goes anywhere from 3000 to 6000 rpm?!?! hooked up spark wire tester light and when i drop throttle below 1000 rpm and on some cylinders light gets real dim when it tries to die. idle it up and it brightens up again. for about 2 minutes it held steady idle at 650 rpm with the plug wire tester looking bright but then stalled. disconnected the idle stabilizer and it still surges and reads funny rpms. dont know what to do next or how? j martin said something about timing being the difference between running like a dog or a bomb, im thinking i like the bomb idea right now! please help