carb popping 6 this time, everybody loves carb threads Options

[dem]

Drove the 914 to turkey time yesterday, about 50 miles of backroads. Seemed to be runnin' about normal with the usual symphony of only-occasional random backfires and pops. It was, of course, ridiculously fun.

Car sat til I left around 10 PM, and by then it was around 40 degrees outside. Lots of popping and stuttering at part throttle. Full throttle and it was the usual fun excitement.

The ride home on the freeway was unpleasant because the 2.7L doesn't need much throttle to keep my little car moving. Could this just be temperature related? Idle jets sized for Los Angeles (where I bought it.)?

Otherwise I assume I'm looking at checking for gunk in the idle jets, I assume.

This is my first carbed porsche, so I guess it is time to really "grok" them. Is there an obvious "start here carb newbie" direction? Book and/or web site? Googling turns up tons and tons of random stuff.

Thanks.

[dem]

Ok, I bought 5 books and googled a lot.. bought the synchrometer (hereafter called "the snail" because synchrometer is hard to type.)

I took a whack at adjusting today, and some oddities I don't understand:

Many procedures say to start with the mixture screws 5.5 turns out. My car won't start/run 5.5 turns out. So I started at 3.5 turns. What's the logic of starting at 5.5 turns out?

I did several rounds of snail/idle level screw/mixture screw/air correction going 'round n 'round until things seemed pretty well set EXCEPT...

Two of the idle mixture screws (#5 and #6) did not seem to have much impact on idle quality. If it was roughly 1 turn out it would start bogging a bit.. but between 1 and 2 turns it didn't seem to have any impact, other than popping up through the carb.

I left those out a bit so I wasn't getting popping (well beyond where it was impacting idle.) I am, of course, terrified of running lean.

After all that, I drove it and still got some backfires. Seems to idle smoother though.

Any other thoughts or tips?

Thanks.