Ok, my 2.8 recently ran about the worst it has since before the carb was rebuilt. It made no power for most of my drive to Syracuse, and I could not go over 50 uphill, like the secondaries weren't opening. The secondaries didnt seem to be going down smoothly when I pushed on them, but that went away 250 miles into a 300 mile trek, and that right now isnt my primary concern. My main concern, is whenever I touch the gas at all I can hear a noticeable ticking noise under the hood, not like a rocker or something, almost like an exhaust leak, but not real noticeable at idle. I just had the timing adjusted, and the car will run over a little, but that may be due to high idle. But it didnt seem to be in high idle when it did it, which is pointing me towards timing. And another thing, when I hit the gas at a stop, it doesnt do anything really, and takes a second or two to go, almost like its bogging, but there seems to be no way the secondary could open that fast and it doesnt stumble like my quadrajet would, it just hesitates real bad. Help, Im confused, 300 miles from home with a car thats running poorly, any ideas are appreciated. If it gets over 5 degrees today i may go out and play with the timing.

 

Leave the timing alone. It won't really help. It's certainly not the problem, so it isn't the solution either. Twiddling the distributor won't fix a fuel problem.

The ticking noise is almost certainly an exhaust leak. Don't worry about it, it won't leave you stranded.

The hesitation is a fuel delivery issue. Either the accelerator pump isn't working, or the power enrichment isn't working. No big surprise; everybody I know that has one of those carbs, either in one of these cars or in a S truck or whatever, complains about it. They're extremely difficult to reassemble correctly. My one little brother has about a 84 S truck that has run just exactly like you describe yours, for as long as he's had it, with the secondary not working and everything. He even has an exhaust leak or 2. What a POS.

But in any case, even that doesn't mean it's going to leave you walking somewhere.... it's just not going to run very good until you can straighten out the carb.