Engine running trouble with Chevy 350

Sure looks pretty complicated in there, is there anything you cant do ?

:cool:
Yeah well I am more the mechanical bent, thats my baby, mainly like making things, so go pretty well with the welding and believe it or not carpentry as in house modifications or building. Pretty good at whacking up a bigger garage to.:rolleyes: :LOL: :LOL:

Another thing to think about: I know I'm always the one for worst case scenarios :LOL:
Are you sure the #8 plug is being fouled by gas? It might be that your heads have a crack. Then the plugs would foul very fast and they would smell of gas, because the cylinder won't fire with water in it, so you have unburnt gas and water on the plug. Looks really yucky and stinks to high heaven AND means you'll have to tear the engine down. To test this quickly take out #8 plug and spin the engine. Hold a piece of card near the plug hole and see if anything comes out. Water will most probably spatter out if there's any in your angine, gas won't spatter, because it's distributed finer. Even small amounts of water standing in on cylinder for only about a week will ruin any engine. I had that happen to me on a 3 year old rebuild I bought (not my rebuild:3dSMILE: )
Do a compression check! If your cylinders vary by more than a couple of points, then you'll have to at least pull the heads and give it new gaskets. Otherwise you'll seriously damage something.
Holleys are very good carbs, but not so easy to tune and deal with in general as for example Edelbrocks.
As I said earlier, first check everything and try to find the error BEFORE you spend any large money on parts you wouldn't have needed in the end...
As always, that's just my opinion...
Hope this helps,
Max

PS: Give us your compression results on all cylinders if your not sure if they're good or not. A compression test will give you a rubish reading in all sorts of cases: Rust anywhere on the cylinder wall, cracks anywhere, blown or weak head gaskets, valves not seating, rings worn... Almost all internal engine faults will show up on a comp test, the test will only be perfect if all internals are in perfect order.

I appreciate your thoughts MadMax. I don't belive that there is water in the engine. The oil would be "milkshake" like....yes? The fouling of #8 does not happen all the time. This is the first time that this occurred with the engine being in this car for over 3 years now.

I want to buy a new carb and distributor anyway, definitely carb first, so I am not too concerned about the $$$ although I appreciate the advice.

Thanks

It's never a bad thing to buy new things, I do that myself all the time :)
Just sometimes you don't have to go that way. Water in the engine won't neccesarily cause your oil to go milkshake. Not at once, only over a longer period. I only noticed after a thousand miles or so of using my "new" engine. And as I said, it's only a thought, and it's never a bad idea to do a comp test, just to be on the safe side. But of course it's your free choice :)
Best of luck,
Max